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For the 4th time in SEC play this season, Arkansas won a series by winning the 1st and 3rd games of a series. The Hogs finished the regular season at 39-15 (18-11) in College Station, TX this weekend and earned themselves a top 4 seed in the SEC Baseball Tournament. The 4-seed is important for the Hogs, because the Tuesday game is a single-elimination game that the Razorbacks definitely want to avoid.
Arkansas won the Thursday Night Game 6-4 in extra innings off of a 2-run homer by Chad Spanberger. Arkansas was only able to generate 6 runs off of 15 hits and left 12 batters on base. Meanwhile, the Aggies scored their 4 runs on 6 hits. Their final run came on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 9th which forced the game to extra innings. The Aggies retired the first two batters in the 10th inning, and it seemed unlikely the Hogs were going to answer, then Jake Arledge singled followed by an opposite field Homerun by Spangberger for the win.
Arkansas once again struggled to turn hits into scoring on Friday night falling to the Aggies 2-5. If it weren’t for a particularly bad 3rd inning in which Taccolini gave up 4 runs, Arkansas might have been able to come out with a win. The story for the Friday game was definitely the lack of timely hitting.
With a 4-seed in the SEC tournament at stake, Arkansas answered the call on Saturday with an 8-0 win. The shutout came courtesy of Blaine Knight and Kevin Kopps who combined to allow only 5 hits. Arkansas spread its scoring out over 5 innings which included 2 solo homeruns by Chad Spanberger.
The SEC Tournament is up next, and here’s a link to the Bracket. The Hogs will be watching on Tuesday to see if they play Mississippi State or Georgia. Arkansas had regular seasons sweeps over both teams, but both have also been playing better baseball as-of-late.
Arkansas has appeared in the SEC baseball tournament 8 of the last 9 years, and this is their 20th all-time appearance. Arkansas has appeared in the championship 3 times (1998, 1999, and 2007).