FAYETTEVILLE — The ninth-ranked Arkansas baseball offense was tamed Sunday by Stetson junior right-hander Trace Hartman.
Hartman allowed a run in the first inning but held down the Razorbacks for the rest of his 6 2/3-inning start, and the Hatters won 4-1 at Baum-Walker Stadium. Arkansas (12-4) had a five-game winning streak snapped.
The Razorbacks had chances against Hartman. They put the leadoff batter on base against him in the first, second, third, fifth and seventh innings, but they could not come through with the big hit. Arkansas finished the game 1 for 16 with runners on base and 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position.
“Hartman just kept finding a way,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “He’d get behind in the count and he’d come back — 3-2, 3-1 and he’d get you out. He just pitched. Give credit to him. He did a good job.”
Stetson (6-10) snapped its three-game losing streak and gave itself a chance to split the series with a win in Monday’s series finale. First pitch is scheduled for noon.
Hartman, a former NCAA Division II standout at University of Charleston (W. Va.) who entered the game with a 1.29 ERA and 0.71 WHIP, scattered 5 hits and 4 walks, and struck out 3 during his 101-pitch outing.
“I was getting the fastball across the plate,” Hartman said, “really just challenging the hitters and making them get themselves out.”
MORE FROM WHOLEHOGSPORTS: Notes, observations from 4-1 loss to Stetson
Stetson homered twice against Arkansas starting pitcher Colin Fisher in the fourth inning to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 4-1 lead. Left fielder Foster Apple led off the inning with a home run to left field to tie the game 1-1.
After a throwing error by Arkansas shortstop Carson Brumbaugh and a 1-out double by Stetson shortstop Landon Russell, right fielder Jayden Hylton hit a 3-run homer to left to give the Hatters the lead for good.
It was the third home run of the season for the 6-foot-5, 225-pound Hylton, who Stetson coach Steve Trimper said before the series was likely the team’s best pro prospect.
“When Jayden gets hot he can be really good,” Trimper said. “He’s had kind of a roller coaster start to this [season]. He’s one of our better players and he just hung a breaking ball to him on that.
“Foster, he just hit a good pitch. That was a ball that the pitcher was doing a great job and he just got his hands inside the ball and was able to turn on it enough to where the wind — the only place the wind was out today, I think, was kind of down that left-field line.”
Three of the runs were earned against Fisher, who had not allowed an earned run in 22 innings prior to the fourth. It was the second-longest stretch without an earned run during Van Horn’s 24-year tenure. Barrett Astin threw 22 2/3 innings without an earned run to begin the 2012 season during the dead-bat era.
Van Horn said Fisher was not as sharp as his recent outings. He gave up leadoff singles to Juan De La Cruz in the first inning and Paul Napolitano in the third, but he worked out of the jams.
Fisher struck out Yohann Dessureault with three consecutive curveballs in the first inning, and Renzo Gonzalez hit into an inning-ending double play in the third.
“You could kind of tell early that he was either going to have to get better [and] he was going to have to recover,” Van Horn said. “We were hoping after maybe the second inning he would like make a jump and start pitching better, but it really just kind of stayed the same.”
Fisher allowed 4 runs (3 earned) and 6 hits and struck out 4 during his 4-inning, 69-pitch start.
The Razorbacks plated a run quickly against Hartman in the first inning when Damian Ruiz led off with a double and scored on Camden Kozeal’s 1-out double.
But there was little pressure on Hartman from that time until he left the game with runners on the corners in the seventh. Right-hander Andrew Lepine replaced Hartman and got Ruiz to ground into a force play at second base to end the seventh.
Arkansas second baseman Camden Kozeal (8) flips to shortstop Carson Brumbaugh to start a double play during a game against Stetson on Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Fayetteville. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)Kozeal said the Razorbacks should have been more aggressive offensively.
“Maybe guys [were] taking it off a little bit 1 through 9,” Kozeal said. “We’ve got to have an aggressive lineup 1 through 9, trying to hit the ball hard.”
Lepine worked around a leadoff walk by Ryder Helfrick in the eighth and a 2-out walk by Carter Rutenbar in the ninth. His 2 1/3 innings of scoreless work Sunday followed 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief against the Razorbacks on Friday.
Trimper called Lepine “a really tricky guy” and a true submariner.
“We got our little sinker baller, sidearmer to come in and get ground balls,” Trimper said.
Stetson out-hit Arkansas 7-5. De La Cruz and Russell both had 2 hits for the Hatters, and Ruiz and Maika Niu both had 2 hits for the Razorbacks.
Cole Gibler did not allow a hit and worked around 2 walks and Brumbaugh’s second throwing error in 3 scoreless innings. Ethan McElvain pitched scoreless eighth and ninth innings.
Box Score
Stetson 4, Arkansas 1.pdf
Highlights
