Good news and bad news for Arkansas baseball on Friday night.
The bad was the Razorbacks fell in their first game against Ole Miss on the road, 4-2. Arkansas gets two more shots against the Rebels on Saturday and Sunday. The first of those games is at 7 p.m. Saturday.
The positive is that everyone close to the Diamond Hogs in the SEC standings lost, too. Arkansas maintained a one-game lead for second in the league standings. The Razorbacks are ahead of Georgia, Auburn and LSU by a single game.
Arkansas put its first runner on base in each of the first three innings and then again in the seventh, but couldn’t score a run. A combination of double-play balls and base-running mistakes stifled the knocks.
Ole Miss had no such trouble. The Rebels weren’t as good as Arkansas at the plate against [autotag]Connor Noland[/autotag] when Tim Elko and Kevin Graham, Ole Miss’ No. 3 and No. 4 hitters, hit a single and a double on consecutive at-bats in the fifth inning to plate three runs. Kent Alderman had opened the scoring an inning before with an RBI single, leading to a 4-0 lead.
Arkansas countered in the eighth when [autotag]Braydon Webb[/autotag] hit a two-run shot to left field but by then it was too late.
Noland pitched eight innings, giving up 11 hits and four walks. Dylan DeLucia worked seven for Ole Miss and gave up eight hits, but struck out nine to help the Rebels strand Hogs hitters.
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