Arkansas baseball dominates Eastern Illinois 13-2

In Hagen Smith’s second start of the season had more adversity than last weekend against Texas, but he was still able to hold Eastern Illinois scoreless in 4 1/3 innings of work.

Smith threw 97 pitches and faced 20 batters on the day and eight of them were able to make it a full count. Despite the extra work from Panthers batters, Smith was able to work through things and not allow a single run scored.

“It could have been a lot worse than it was,” Smith said. “I thought the defense played pretty good behind me and the runs scored a lot so it was pretty easy to pitch like that even though I struggled a little bit.”

Head coach Dave Van Horn said he liked what he saw from Smith, despite it not being as dominant of a performance as last week.

“His command wasn’t as good as like last week, because last week everything was working, as far as throwing strikes and being around the zone,” said Van Horn. “Today, it’s a lot different elements and first home game, probably hyped up a little bit. I just didn’t think that he commanded the ball like he can and will. But his stuff was really good.”