By Robbie Neiswanger
Arkansas News Bureau • rneiswanger@arkansasnews.com
TEMPE, Ariz. — Arkansas battled its way out of the loser’s bracket to finally get its much-anticipated rematch with Arizona State on Sunday night.
The result, however, was an ugly ending to the season.
Designated hitter Joey DeMichele and Arizona State pounded Arkansas’ pitching, while Sun Devils starter Mitchell Lambson frustrated the Razorbacks’ offense in a 13-4 win in Packard Stadium.
The loss ended Arkansas’ season in the desert for the second straight time. Sunday’s loss also kept Arkansas from advancing to a super regional for the third straight season and dropped the Razorbacks to 0-5 against Arizona State in its home ballpark.
“I’m really proud of our team hanging in there,” said Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn, who felt his team was sluggish after winning an elimination game against Charlotte earlier in the day. “It has been a long day.”
Arizona State (42-16) entered Sunday night’s game with 20 consecutive wins in regional play at home. And the Sun Devils — who hosted and won a regional for the fifth straight year — had little trouble extending it to 21.
Johnny Reuttiger led off the game with a triple down the third base line off Barrett Astin (5-2), who started for just the third time this season.
The freshman pitcher recovered to retire the next two batters, but DeMichele crushed a two-strike, two-out pitch over the right field wall to give the Sun Devils a 2-0 lead. DeMichele was 2-for-5 with four RBIs in the win.
“For him to do what he did, just kind of changed the momentum, I felt,” Arizona State coach Tim Esmay said of the big blast. “We could’ve walked out of there with nothing. … I thought that was a huge swing.”
ASU made it 3-0 an inning later when Andrew Alpin hit a double to deep centerfield off Astin, scoring Zack MacPhee from second base. It was the last run Astin, who allowed six hits in three innings, allowed in his short stint. But the damage was done.
Arkansas had some opportunities to crack Lambson (7-3), who started for just the third time in his 100 career appearances. The Razorbacks had the bases loaded with two outs in the third, but James McCann popped out to end the inning. Matt Reynolds hit a one-out single in the fifth to move Jarrod McKinney to third, but was thrown out trying to take second base.
“We kind of knew we were going to struggle off that left-hander,” Van Horn said of Lambson, who threw five scoreless innings in relief during the super regional last year. “He was really good against us last year. Really the only difference is he seemed like he threw his fastball a lot more (Sunday).”
While Arkansas missed out on its scoring chances, Arizona State broke open the game by getting seven more runs in the sixth inning.
It began when reliever Trent Daniel — who replaced Astin in the fourth inning — issued a bases loaded walk to make it 4-0. By the time it ended, Arizona State sent 10 batters to the plate, had six hits and led 10-0.
It was the second straight game ASU scored 10 runs or more after beating Charlotte 16-1 on Saturday.
It also was the first time Arkansas had allowed 10 or more runs this season. The previous high of nine occurred twice in a 13-9 win against Wisconsin-Milwaukee on March 5 and a 9-2 loss at Auburn on March 19.
“This game has no meaning to their season,” McCann said of Arkansas’ staff.
Arkansas, which reached Sunday night’s game thanks to an offensive outburst in the 11-3 win against Charlotte, didn’t score its first run against ASU until McCann’s RBI double in the bottom of the sixth. The Razorbacks added three more an inning later, but the game already was out of reach.
Arkansas lost a road regional for the fourth time in five tries under coach Dave Van Horn. But the Razorbacks did manage to reach the 40-win mark for the third straight season and first time since 1989, 1990 and 1991.
“If you had told me we were going to win 40 games with all these young guys last fall, I probably would’ve chuckled and turned my back and thought, ‘We’ll see,’” Van Horn said. “Somehow we did it.”
Tempe Regional Schedule
Friday, June 3
Game 1 – Charlotte 3, Arkansas 2
Game 2 – Arizona State 4, New Mexico 2
Saturday, June 4
Game 3 – Arkansas 3, New Mexico 0
Game 4 – Arizona State 16, Charlotte 1
Sunday, June 5
Game 5 – Arkansas 11, Charlotte 3
Game 6 – Arizona State 13, Arkansas 4
