After walking off with a victory on Saturday afternoon, LSU fell behind early against Arkansas and never fully recovered in a 10-4 loss Sunday.
LSU junior southpaw Kyle Bouman took the hill looking to complete the three-game sweep of the Razorbacks, but Arkansas’ hitters came ready to swing, and they did so early and often.
Arkansas redshirt sophomore centerfielder Tyler Spoon led off the contest with a double over LSU sophomore right fielder Mark Laird’s head. Razorback freshman right fielder Andrew Benintendi followed with a single to left field, then junior left fielder Joe Serrano walked to load the bases with no outs.
Two batters later, redshirt freshman designated hitter Blake Baxendale skied a pitch over the left field wall, making it 4-0.
“Momentum is your starting pitcher,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “If your starting pitcher doesn’t perform well, you put yourself in a bind right away, and that’s what happened to us today.”
Bouman lasted only one inning before junior left-hander Cody Glenn took his place on the mound.
The Razorbacks added another run in the top of the fourth after Glenn made a throwing error while attempting to turn a double play.
In the top of the fifth, Glenn surrendered two straight walks to lead off the frame before being replaced by junior right-hander Brady Domangue. After a sacrifice fly and a Baxendale RBI double gave Arkansas its sixth run and seventh runs, redshirt junior first baseman Eric Fisher launched a two-run home run into the Diamond Deck in right field.
Bouman and Glenn combined for four walks in four innings of work.
“The key to the game was in the first four or five innings, we walked four batters, and they all scored for them,” Mainieri said. “We didn’t take as much advantage of the free passes as they did against us.”
It was Fisher’s third-straight game with a home run against LSU pitching.
Offensively, LSU scored two runs early on freshman left fielder Jake Fraley’s two-RBI single, and a sac fly by sophomore centerfielder Andrew Stevenson in the sixth and an RBI single by junior catcher Kade Scivicque in the seventh put four runs on the board for the Tigers.
“Going down 4-0 obviously sucks in the first inning, but coming back with two runs was huge,” Fraley said. “We’re hoping we would get a spark plug going for us. But he made the pitches, and we didn’t get the hits today.”
Though Sunday’s contest quickly got out of hand, Fraley said the squad will evaluate the series as a whole.
“When you go through a game like this where you lose… it’s huge for us to come back and just forget about this,” Fraley said. “We’re just going to look at the positives from the weekend, and that’s winning the series.”