FAYETTEVILLE — Luke Bonfield and Grant Koch both homered to power Arkansas to a 3-1 victory over Mississippi State in the SEC baseball opener Friday night at Baum Stadium.
Arkansas sophomore pitcher Blaine Knight (2-1) set career highs in strikeouts (11), pitches (104) while allowing just three hits in seven innings.
"It was a really good Friday night ball game in the SEC," said Dave Van Horn, Arkansas coach. "I think there were 27 strikeouts and we got a couple of balls up and out. It was a wide strike zone, but it was just a ball outside for both teams and the pitchers adjusted to that.
"I thought it was just tremendous by Blaine. He shut them down after the first. It was his best night as a Razorback. He missed one spot, a ball that ran back over the middle of the plate."
Knight gave up a solo homer to Ryan Gridley in the first before settling into a groove. The Bulldogs did not put a runner to third against Knight over his final six innings.
The Hogs answered with two runs in the bottom of the first against MSU starter Konnor Pilkington. Chad Spanberger sliced an opposite-field single to left field. Bonfield followed with another slice drive the other way, a lined homer into the MSU bullpen in right field. It was Bonfield's fourth.
The Hogs set the final score with Koch's line-drive homer in the sixth inning, his sixth. Pilkington went the distance for the Bulldogs, striking out 13.
Kevin Kopps pitched the eighth and Cannon Chadwick followed with a perfect ninth.
Van Horn said he wanted to pull Knight after six innings, but pitching coach Wes Johnson was talked out of it.
"Coach Johnson went down to talk to Blaine," Van Horn said. "Blaine was adamant that he wanted to go back out for the seventh."
Knight said he was ready when Johnson came to his end of the dugout.
"I thought he was fixing to yank me," Knight said. "I said, 'Don't you do it. I got one more in me and then you can turn it over to someone else.'
"I felt good tonight. I had everything working. I had really good command of the fast ball to my glove side. I could bury my cutter. And I had the slider for the chase pitch."
The only issue was some cramping in the forearm in the seventh.
"I didn't drink enough water during the game," Knight said. "I've had (the cramping) before."
Bonfield said Pilkington tried to sneak a fast ball past him on the outside edge.
"That's what I was looking for," Bonfield said. "That's what a lefty is going to try to do to you and that was what I was waiting to see, but he left it up.
"This felt good. For the guys who have been here, we remember that they ended our season last year."
Arkansas (15-4, 1-0) meets Mississippi State (12-7, 0-1) in the second game of the series at 7 p.m. Saturday night. Attendance was 4,387.