Arkansas completes series sweep of Ole Miss on Saturday with 21st consecutive home win

By DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – For No. 1 Arkansas, aloha means good bye and also 21 straight wins at place that has become home sweep home.

Razorback freshman designated hitter and Hawaii native Nolan Souza hammered two home runs and drove in five runs, including a three-run, tie-breaking  bomb in Saturday’s seventh inning of a 7-3 win over Ole Miss.

“It was a really big game for us,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. “We talked the guys a lot yesterday after the game about the opportunity to sweep. It gives you an opportunity, that if things don’t go well for you down the road one weekend.

“… Any time you finish somebody off, especially at your own ballpark, it would be a great win for us. We came out and played hard. We were down, we’re tied, we’re up, we’re down. Just back and forth. We put together a little rally there in seventh, and then Souza hit the home run against a 30-mile an hour wind.

“Very rarely are you going to see that where you know when it leaves the bat it’s out of the park when the wind’s blowing that hard. Just a great swing and a good inning there to grab that little bit of a cushion.”

The win for top-ranked Arkansas (27-3, 11-1) was its eighth straight and  pushed the Razorbacks’ school record to 21 consecutive home victories.

“I think this is exactly what we all expected, honestly,” Arkansas pitcher Brady Tygart said. “We knew that we had the tools to be the best team in the country. We’ve been handling every single opponent like we should. We’re the Arkansas Razorbacks and I don’t think we’re playing our best baseball yet. I think we are going to really start rolling. Everybody’s going to be in trouble.”

It also completed a series sweep of the Rebels (18-16, 3-9) in front of a season-high announced crowd of 11,184 fans at Baum-Walker Stadium, which hosted 32,649 fans during the weekend.

“,I think it’s great,” Van Horn said. “I don’t know what else to tell you, our guys show up and they play hard and they play a lot of games at home. We’ve taken advantage of it. We play extremely well here, we’ve played well everywhere honestly.

“I’m happy that our crowd is getting to see us play well every time they show up. That’s pretty much what’s been going on lately. It’s been fun to coach these guys and it’s fun to watch them play. I tell them that. A lot of times, when the game starts we’re coaching but we’re watching you play, and it’s been fun.”

Fellow Hawaiian Wehiwa Aloy hit a home run in each of the Razorbacks’ wins Thursday and Friday over the Rebels and has a team-leading 8 for the season while Souza has 6.

The pair of first-years Razorbacks combined for four home runs and 11 RBIs in the three wins.

“Well that’s pretty good,” Van Horn said. “You keep bringing up this Hawaiian thing, but it’s just good to see guys that will commit, and go so far away from home and learn to adapt and get comfortable. Teammates love them. Just happy for both of those guys.”

The win also gave Arkansas a a trio of sweeps in its first four SEC series, including back-to-back home ones of 2023 national champion LSU and 2022 College World Series winner Ole Miss.

Souza, who was 3 of 5 in the game, launched his  first blast of the game in the fourth to break up a scoreless game.

Arkansas starting pitcher Brady Tygart and Ole Miss’ Mason Nichols, making his first career start after 56 career relief ones, hooked up in a scoreless pitching battle into the fourth inning.

But Souza’s fifth round-tripper of the season was just a preview of coming attractions.

Nichols (3 2/3 innings, 1 run on 3 hits, 4 Ks) exited a batter later, but Ole Miss bounced right back in the top of the fifth,  knocking Tygart out of the game via singles Andrew Fischer and Ethan Groff to go up 2-1.

Tygart, who had been sick the last few days, pitched 4 1/3 innings while allowing two runs on four hits, fanning seven, walking three and throwing 82 pitches, 47 for strikes.

“I thought it was great,” Van Horn said. “I mean, obviously, I know he really wanted to have a good outing. He felt like his last couple outings, he’d just been okay.

“He gave us a chance to win the game on day three of a series when Ole Miss was fighting like crazy. They needed to get out of here with one, and he held them down pretty good.

“If you look at it, we had a chance to blow this thing open in the second and third inning, and we didn’t. I think in those two innings alone, we stranded five runners. There were a couple other times we had a chance to blow it open, too, but we got just enough hits to win. Feel fortunate that we got those hits.”

Jake Faherty and Parker Coil both got two outs each before Gabe Gaeckle (1-2) hurled the next two innings, allowing a run on two hits, fanning four and walking one.

“We knew in the fall that he was going to pitch a lot for us,” Van Horn said of Gaeckle. “He threw really well in the fall. I think he’s thrown better in the spring. I think he continues to get better.

“ He doesn’t do anything max effort. It’s easy. It’s an easy mid 90s. It’s an upper 80s slider. It’s a good changeup. I wouldn’t say he’s exceeded it. We thought it could get there, and I think he’s going to be even better in a month. He can go three. We could probably spot start him, if we wanted to.

“He could do a lot of different roles for us, and today he did exactly what we needed him to do. Get us through a couple innings and maybe hand the ball off, and that’s what he did.”

That handoff was to Will McEntire, who got his fourth save while allowing a run while pitching the ninth and stranding the tying run at the plate.

Arkansas took the lead back in the bottom of the fifth on Jared Sprague-Lott’s run-scoring double play and Souza’s RBI single that beat the shift and scored Aloy for a 3-2 edge.

Judd Utermark’s one-out double and Brayden Randle’s two-out RBI single tied it 3-3 in the top of the sixth.

Randle had been 0 of 9 until his base hit deadlock the contest.

Bianco was pleased with what he got from Nichols.

“Proud of him,” Bianco said. “It was a gutsy performance. It was one of those days where we needed some zeros, we talked about it and he delivered.”

But he also made to clear there were no moral victories.

“It is frustrating and I get it,” Bianco said. “And I get it, everybody is frustrated. I get the fans, I get the players, it ’s tough. It is tough when you get to this point.

“But we are playing really good teams and you have got to out play them and we didn’t. You have got to credit Arkansas with a really good week. They pitch it super well and they get the timely hit and they do what they need to do offensively.”

Nichols noted this is a tough stretch for Ole Miss, who had won 12 of 16 before this seven-game losing skid that has a home sweep by Kentucky and a road one to Arkansas.

“It was a really tough one and a really tough weekend,” Nichols said. “It stinks because we laid it out on the line and we came up short three times.

“I was just trying to go out there and compete for the guys today. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t pretty, but I thought that I did that okay and we will continue to do that as a team and I will continue to do that as an individual.

“That’s the only way there is – it’s straight through it.”

Photo by John D. James

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