Arkansas flubs chances for LSU series win

BATON ROUGE, La. — The No. 5 Arkansas Razorbacks were not able to hold on to a 3-2 lead in the late innings Saturday against the LSU Tigers at Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.

LSU (28-20, 12-12 Southeastern Conference) scored four runs in the seventh and eighth innings. Arkansas (33-15, 14-10) left five runners on base over the final five innings and nine overall in a 6-4 loss on the road.

The Razorbacks also missed a chance on Sunday to salvage a series victory with a 7-5 loss. LSU led, 6-1, after six innings, but Arkansas was unable to draw even with the hosts.

It was the third time this season Arkansas won the first game of an SEC series on the road only to lose the next two games. The Razorbacks also won, 6-3, on March 23 at No. 1 Florida (38-11, 18-6) and, 6-4, March 29 at No. 4 Ole Miss (3613, 13-11) only to lose the next two games in both series.

Arkansas was able to cling to a one-game lead in the SEC West after the weekend’s results. Ole Miss lost two out of three games on the road at South Carolina (2819, 13-11), while Auburn (34-14, 13-11) joined the race with a three-game home sweep of Vanderbilt (25-22,

11-13). The Tigers outscored the Commodores, 29-5, during their three-game series.

The Razorbacks are tied with Vanderbilt for the third-worst road record in the SEC at 5-10. LSU’s road record is 3-12, while last-place Alabama (24-24, 6-17) is 4-13 away from Tuscaloosa. The conference’s

10 other teams, including six of the seven in the East division, have six or more road victories.

Arkansas battled back Saturday from an early two-run deficit with the help of a two-run home run by sophomore center fielder Dominic Fletcher in the third inning. The visitors took a one-run lead on a bases-laded walk in the fifth, but could only generate one more run the rest of the way.

The Hogs had a chance to add to their lead in the fifth with the bases loaded and one out, but an inning-ending double play cut the rally short. Even with a run in the top of the ninth inning to cut the LSU lead to two runs, Arkansas still only managed to put two runners into scoring position over the final four frames.

Starting pitcher Kacey Murphy (5-4) worked around a long first inning and ended up with 6 1/3 innings pitched and just two earned runs allowed with two walks and five strikeouts on 95 pitches. Mur-

phy had a stretch from the end of the third through the sixth inning where he retired 10 batters in a row on only 39 pitches.

It was Murphy’s fifth straight start of five innings or more and he has only walked four batters over his last 29 innings pitched. After 11 appearances this year, Murphy now has a 5.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio, 6.7 in conference games.

The top three batters in Arkansas’ lineup made up eight of the Hogs’ nine hits in the game. Fletcher and freshman infielder Casey Martin tallied three hits each, while junior leadoff right fielder Eric Cole turned in a two-hit game of his own to give him five hits for the series.

Cole is now hitting .342 on the year with a team-leading 66 hits. He has at least one hit in eight of his last nine games and has delivered three-straight multi-hit performances.

Fletcher fell just a triple short of the cycle, finishing 3-for-5 with a run scored and two RBIs. He has now homered in three of his last five games and is hitting .415 over his last 10 games with 11 RBIs.

Arkansas could never get a lock on LSU starting pitcher A.J. Labas (6-1) on Sunday, scoring just one run off the freshman hurler in six innings. The Razorbacks took advantage of the Tigers’ first man out of the bullpen in Nick Bush in the seventh.

Four runs came home on just two hits as two LSU errors also helped the cause to help the Hogs pull within one run at 6-5. That was the closest the Razorbacks got as the Tigers added an insurance run in the bottom half of the seventh on an RBI single by Zach Watson for the final tally.

Freshman left fielder Heston Kjerstad bounced back from striking out five times the night before to 2-for-4 with three RBIs and a home run on Sunday. He launched his 10th home run of the year in the top of the fifth inning to tie the game at 1-1 and joined Martin and Cole as the only Razorbacks with 10 or more home runs this year.

The 5-6-7 hitters for Arkansas, including redshirt senior second baseman Carson Shaddy, who was coming off a hand injury, contributed to six of Arkansas’ seven hits in the game. Along with Kjerstad, Shaddy and junior catcher Grant Koch had two hits each.

Shaddy missed the previous seven games after taking a ball off the hand on April 21 in the last of three losses at Mississippi State (26-22, 11-13). He went 2-for-4 Sunday with one run scored and one double, his eighth of the year.

Redshirt sophomore Isaiah Campbell (3-5) matched Labas pitch-for-pitch in the first four innings. Campbell struck out only two, but limited his pitch count and held LSU to just four hits and one run. He ran into trouble at the start of the fifth with four-consecutive one-out hits and had to be relieved with two runs home in the inning and two runners still in scoring position. Campbell finished with 4

1/3 innings pitched and five earned runs on eight hits and 74 pitches.

The bullpen behind Campbell gave the Hogs a chance over the second half of the game. Sophomore Evan Lee faced just three batters and got team team out of the fifth inning. Cody Scroggins followed with only one run allowed in the fifth.

Freshman Bryce Bonnin made his first appearance since March

30, but only lasted a third of an inning as LSU hitters were able to get a single and a double, including the insurance run by Watson. Junior Barrett Loseke was the final pitcher for the Hogs and threw 1

2/3 scoreless innings in his second appearance of the weekend.

Only six games remain in the regular season for the Hogs. They are scheduled to host No. 21 Texas A&M (34-14, 12-12) for three games this weekend before closing out the regular season May 17-19 at Georgia

(33-14, 15-19).