Isaiah Campbell saved one of his best pitching performances for his last outing at Baum-Walker Stadium on Saturday.
Getting some solid fielding and big hits helped.
Arkansas bombed Ole Miss in the first game of the super regional, 11-2. Now they find themselves a game away from getting to Omaha.
The last win and last out often are the hardest to get in these baseball series. Dave Van Horn and all the players know it, too.
“We’ve still got unfinished business,” Campbell said after 8.1 innings where he struck out seven while giving up five hits.
It was an emotional outing, probably even for Van Horn, who never shows a lot of that one way or the other. Many of the 11,350 announced crowd (it seemed like more) probably thought when he walked off in the eighth that was it.
He and pitching coach Matt Hobbs were talking about it when Campbell put in his two cents.
“He came running down around the corner and said, ‘I want to finish this up,’ and I said, ‘okay, you can go back out, but you’re going to get one out,’ and he said, ‘okay,'” was how Van Horn described it later.
Things started a little rocky, with Campbell giving up a homer to the Rebels’ second hitter, Grae Kessinger.
Nobody really expected Campbell to be rattled.
“Just because I got one out of the yard wasn’t going to mean he was going to give in,” Kessinger said later.
Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco knew it coming in.
“He is a true ace,” he said.
Sunday, Van Horn is going with freshman Connor Noland, who will be going against the Rebels’ best pitcher by the numbers in Doug Nikhazy.
Van Horn would probably be happy with a repeat of the way everybody played around Campbell.
“We played really good defense and our offense was clicking pretty good,” he said. “We did a nice job of fouling off a lot of pitches with a lot of good two-strike swings. We got pitch counts up on (Will) Ethridge.”
But the recurring theme Van Horn has been preaching comes into play again.
“Just like last week, I told the players after the second win they still hadn’t done anything,” he said. “It’s nice winning games, but I’ve been on both sides of it – coming back and winning them and not finishing them out.
“So same as always. Go home, take a shower, eat, hang out, watch some baseball and get up and do it again.”
The advice would probably hold true for the fans, too, who showed up in force Saturday.
In case you’re wondering, Bianco wasn’t too concerned about his team.
“They get it,” he said. “They realize that it comes down to controlling what you can control. I know it sounds so mundane and coach-speak, but it’s the truth.
“Tomorrow it is about winning the first pitch, winning the first out and moving on.”
Ole Miss probably won’t just show up and yield. In the postgame Saturday, Bianco wasn’t getting drawn into it talking about the series in March where the Rebels won the last two games in Fayetteville to take the series.
But for them, they have to win or their season is over.
For the Hogs?
They know how heavy the weight can get in a must-win game … all the way to the final out.
