OMAHA, Neb. – Sitting in the press conference room at Charles Schwab Field on Monday after throwing the first no-hitter at the Men’s College World Series in 65 years, Gage Wood had a message for Arkansas fans.
“We’re not done yet,” he said with a smile in a soft Arkansas drawl.
And one day later, his teammate Zach Root shut out the UCLA Bruins over five innings, and the Hogs held on despite a few defensive hiccups in the ninth for a 7-3 win, their 50th of the season, that kept the Razorbacks’ national championship hopes alive. They will face LSU in Wednesday’s nightcap at 7 p.m. EDT, where a win would earn them another game against the Tigers on Thursday.
“Zachary threw 38 pitches a few days ago, threw 87 tonight, only gave up three hits, didn’t give up a run,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said of his starting pitcher. “Just did a tremendous job, and then Aiden [Jimenez] came in and gave us three really good innings.”
Early in the game, Root gave up a pair of hits. Dean West singled to lead off the game, and Roch Cholowski followed with a single. Mulivai Levu’s deep fly ball to center allowed both to tag and advance, giving UCLA runners at second and third with one out. After AJ Salgado lined out to short, West attempted to steal home, but was tagged out by Arkansas catcher Ryder Helfrick inches before his fingers touched the plate, ending the top of the first inning.
In the bottom of the frame, before UCLA could record an out, Charles Davalan singled through the right side of the infield, and Southeastern Conference player of the year Wehiwa Aloy followed him, launching his 22nd homer of the season over the right field wall to give Arkansas a 2-0 lead.
“Yeah, it gives us a lot of confidence as a group. And it was a big swing, especially in the first inning, scoring first and kind of building off that,” said Arkansas right fielder Logan Maxwell.
In the fifth, after giving up singles to Brent Iredale and Justin Thomas Jr., John Savage pulled starter Cody Delvecchio from the game and brought in Ian May, who got Charles Davalan to ground into a 4-6-3 double play which advanced Iredell to third.
But then Aloy, a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award, struck again, launching a ball to the right center field gap. Bruins center fielder Payton Brennan gave chase and crashed into the wall, while the ball hit high on the wall and bounced behind him. Aloy got to third standing up, and the triple drove in Brent Iredale to give the Razorbacks a 3-0 lead.
Despite using eight pitchers in the elimination game that started Monday night and was completed Tuesday after a suspension due to weather, UCLA head coach John Savage had most of his arms available. Delvecchio, who missed a good portion of the season due to academic ineligibility, made his first appearance since March 28 and allowed three runs on seven hits, striking out three. In total, UCLA used seven pitchers against Arkansas, four of whom appeared in the game against LSU that was completed Tuesday morning.
But it was the Razorbacks’ pitchers who shined brightest, with Root allowing three hits and two walks over five shutout innings, and Aidan Jimenez stacking three shutout innings where he allowed one hit, two walks, and struck out two on top of Root’s effort.
In the seventh, with Brett Iredale on third with two outs, the Bruins intentionally walked Wehiwa Aloy to get to Logan Maxwell. But Maxwell made them pay, ripping his fifth double of the year to the left center field wall to score Iredale and Aloy and make it 5-0.
The Hogs added two more in the eighth, with Cam Kozeal scoring on a wild pitch by UCLA’s Jackson Lee and and RBI double that sent Brent Iredale home and chased Lee from the game for Ryan Rissas, the seventh Bruins pitcher of the game.
In the top of the ninth, Will McEntire came on to finish off the game for Arkansas, but Mulivai Levu led off with a triple to the right field corner to give UCLA a bit of life, and two batters later, third baseman Brent Iredale couldn’t snag AJ Salgado’s weak grounder up the third base line on the backhand. Levu scooted home to break the shutout and Arkansas’s 18-inning streak of shutout pitching as the ball went into left field. Payton Brennan’s swinging bunt back to the mound was easily fielded by McEntire, but his throw was wide, and Salgado came in to score from second.
Brennan got to second base on McEntire’s throwing error, and then advanced to third on Aidan Espinoza’s flyout to center field. He scored UCLA’s last run of the season on a wild pitch, and Phoenix Call flew out to center to end the game.
“The turnaround that we had from last year was pretty special in a lot of ways. And like I told them, it’s the team that really built this,” said Savage. His team had to endure a season where they were temporarily evicted from their home field and spent a lot of time on buses to practice at local fields. They went 48-18 and earned a trip to Omaha a year after going 19-33 and failing to qualify for the final Pac-12 tournament. “The cast of characters did a remarkable job day in and day out, weight room, classroom, practice, clubhouse, bus, airplane, hotel, the whole deal. I’m just so proud of how they respected the process.”
Arkansas, meanwhile, gets a rematch with their conference rival, LSU, on Wednesday.
“We played them four times. We lost in extra innings, they whipped us, we beat them. And then what happened the other night — I remember them all,” Van Horn said of the Tigers. “I mean, they’re really good. They don’t have any weaknesses. They got big time arms. Their top six, seven arms all are big-time at this level. And they’ve got power, they’ve got some speed. And you just have to pitch well against them, you gotta score. And if we don’t score, we’ll be in trouble.”
Photo: Southeastern Conference player of the year Wehiwa aloy homered and had an RBI triple in Arkansas’s 7-3 win against UCLA at the College World Series. (Photo Courtesy of Arkansas Baseball)
