FAYETTEVILLE — The University of Arkansas baseball team is used to opening SEC play with a series sweep.
It happened again on Sunday when the No. 1 Razorbacks beat Missouri 9-1 before an announced crowd of 9,867 to complete a three-game sweep of the Tigers.
Arkansas (17-2, 3-0) opened SEC play for a sweep for the sixth time in seven years and improved to 20-1 in those games.
The Razorbacks had to settle for taking two of three games from Alabama in 2021.
All of the last seven SEC opening series have been played at Baum-Walker Stadium.
“You’ve got to take care of your park,” Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said. “You’ve got to win at home, and the real good teams win on the road.”
The sweeps include Mississippi State in 2017, Kentucky 2018, Missouri in 2019, Kentucky in 2022, Auburn in 2023 and Missouri this season.
There were no SEC games played in 2020 because of covid-19.
“I didn’t know we swept six times,” Van Horn said. “I could see winning the series, but sweeps are hard, and good for our guys.”
The Razorbacks extended their winning streak to 13 games in out-scoring the Tigers (9-11, 0-3) by a combined 23-1.
“It’s big,” said Arkansas junior catcher Hudson White, a transfer from Texas Tech. “Conference is always tough.
“Coach says it all the time, it’s one game of 30. You’ve got to take it day by day, game by game, one pitch at a time.
“Anytime that you can win a SEC game, it’s great.”
Razorbacks junior left-hander Mason Molina (3-0) went 5 1/3 innings with 10 strikeouts and didn’t allow a run. He held the Tigers to one hit and two walks.
“He’s hard to hit,” Van Horn said. “He’s just kind of effectively wild a little bit. Kind of keeps them off balance.”
Molina threw 98 pitches with 54 strikes.
“Obviously if he was a little bit more efficient with pitches he probably could have gone seven innings,” Van Horn said. “But they fouled off a lot of pitches on him, because that fastball is hard to get on top of.”
After Missouri put runners on first and second base against Molina in the sixth inning, Koty Frank came in to pitch and struck out Trevor Austin and Jackson Lovich to keep Arkansas ahead 5-0.
The Razorbacks took a 2-0 lead in the first inning against Missouri starter Carter Rustad on a single by Peyton Stovall, double by Kendall Diggs and a sacrifice-fly by Wehiwa Aloy after Diggs went to third base on a wild pitch.
“It keeps the momentum on your side and the faster that I can get them back in the dugout the more the momentum stays on our side and builds,” Molina said of pitching with an early lead. “When we have a big inning like that, my only job is to go out there and get us back in as fast as possible.”
Arkansas scored in five innings, including Ben McLaughlin’s home run in the third, Stovall’s RBI double in the fifth and Aloy’s two-run single in the seventh. White added an RBI double in the seventh.
“I like big innings, but I also like putting some pressure on every inning,” Van Horn said. “Two here, one there, three there. That’s how you kind of put it away.
“You just keep the momentum away from them and get it to the point where they’re thinking, ‘Man, this is too big a hill to climb.’ It’s kind of what we did today.”
Stovall, in his seventh game back after being out with a broken foot and his fourth game played at second base this season, went 2 for 5. Aloy was 2 for 3 with a walk and had 3 RBI.
Along with Frank and Fisher, the Razorbacks used Gage Wood and Gabe Gaeckle out of the bullpen.
Gaeckle, a freshman right-hander who has emerged as the Razorbacks’ closer with four saves, pitched the ninth on a blowout game because he hadn’t pitched previously on the weekend with the Razorbacks winning 8-0 on Friday night and 6-0 on Saturday.
“They played good baseball and we didn’t,” Missouri first-year Coach Kerrick Jackson said. “It really comes down to it being that simple.
“The skill level in this league is high. We play good baseball in this league — we throw strikes, we play good defense, we have quality at-bats — and we didn’t do that all weekend.
“Those are things that are frustrating about this is, those are things we can control. We’ve got a young group.
“The last time an SEC team had this many first-year players on the field, I’d love to know when it was. We’ve just got to keep growing these kids up and get them to understand success has to be things that we define it to be, not the external numbers.”
In contrast Van Horn has a veteran team used to winning.
“Just a really good weekend for us,”Van Horn said. “We pitched extremely well obviously. They scored one run all weekend. We pitched out of a couple of jams.
“We also fielded the ball. We didn’t make an error all weekend.
“We just kind of pitched and played defense and had some timely hits. A good way to start off conference play.”