Ole Miss drops another SEC series against Arkansas
Published 7:41 pm Saturday, April 8, 2023
- Ole Miss baseball coach Mike Bianco watches from the dugout during Saturday's game against Arkansas at Swayze Field. (Kiana Dale/Ole Miss Athletics)
OXFORD — The team that won the College World Series last year is still looking for its first Southeastern Conference series win of this year.
Tavian Josenberger singled in the go-ahead run and then scored another in the seventh inning, and reliever Gage Wood allowed one run in three innings as No. 5 Arkansas defeated Ole Miss 6-4 on Saturday in the finale of their three-game series at Swayze Field.
Ole Miss (18-13, 2-10 SEC) split a doubleheader with the Razorbacks (25-6, 8-4) on Friday, but couldn’t get a needed series win. The defending national champions have lost all four conference series so far, and will go on the road to play Mississippi State next weekend.
“I challenged them to not fall into the woe is me, bad luck, we hit some balls even in the ninth inning where they made some nice plays … that’s what the losing team says a lot of times,” Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said. “It’s not about luck. If you really go back and watch the game, we had opportunities to make a couple plays and minimize some innings and we didn’t. We had opportunities to make some plays and get off the field and we didn’t. On the other side, they did.”
Ole Miss fell behind early, but tied the game at 3 on a two-run home run by Jacob Gonzalez in the fifth inning. Gonzalez finished 2-for-4 with three RBIs.
In the seventh, Arkansas’ Caleb Cali led off with a single, went to second on a passed ball, and scored on Josenberger’s single. Peyton Stovall followed with another single, and Tavian Josenberger scored on an error on the play for a 5-3 lead.
Gonzalez hit an RBI single in the bottom of the seventh, but Arkansas answered back with an RBI single of its own by Kendall Diggs in the eighth.
Ole Miss got the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning, but Wood got John Kramer to fly out to left and struck out Peyton Chatagnier to end the game.
Wood finished with four strikeouts in his three innings of work for the Razorbacks, and earned his second save of the season. Cali was 2-for-3 with a solo home run and three runs scored, and Stovall finished 2-for-4 with two RBIs.