McEntire delivers what Razorbacks needed on mound

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn summed everything up fairly easily.

“It was a great performance by Will McEntire,” he said after the right-hander needed just 97 pitches for a complete-game 6-1 win over Louisiana Tech.

For a pitching staff that’s been hit by injuries all years.l

After having to use more pitchers than he wanted on Tuesday in a win over Army, Van Horn didn’t want to go real deep on Saturday that clinched the weekend series before SEC play starts next week against Auburn.

McEntire delivered all that, giving up just three hits and allowing just a single unearned run.

“His cutter was REALLY working today,” Van Horn said later. “We could see from the side it was really moving. His pitch count was really low. Once he got to the eighth and it was going quickly we knew we were going to give him a shot.”

Getting some early run support helped. Getting a run in the first followed by back-to-back homers by Kendall Diggs and Peyton Holt in the second gave McEntire some confidence and the fielding behind him was good, including a play by Holt at third where he threw out a runner from behind third base all the way over to first.

It was the first complete game on the mound by a Hogs’ pitcher in seven years.

“Thanks for saving the bullpen,” Van Horn said later.

He probably wasn’t joking that much, but he had alerted his team before the game they needed to be on top of their game.

“Told them they were going to get a lot of ground balls today,” Van Horn said. “Anything around eight or seven innings is good. Usually there’s an inning with 22-25 pitches in there that ruins it.”

McEntire wasn’t letting that happen today.

“I felt like I had most of my pitches,” he said later.

The Hogs added solo runs in the  fourth innings with another Jace Bohrofen homer. Adding runs in the fifth and eighth innings was just some icing on the cake.

The Razorbacks will host the Bulldogs on Sunday at 1 p.m. to finish up the series, the last non-conference weekend series. They have UNLV coming in for games Tuesday and Wednesday before starting conference play against Auburn next Friday night.