FAYETTEVILLE — The hottest offense in the Southeastern Conference resides at Baum-Walker Stadium.
No. 7 Arkansas won its league-best sixth consecutive conference game Saturday night with a 15-3 pounding of No. 18 Tennessee in front of a boisterous announced crowd of 9,842. The Razorbacks won the series and assured themselves the outright lead in the SEC West entering the eighth week of the conference season.
Arkansas (33-11, 14-6 SEC) will go for the series sweep Sunday at 4 p.m.
The Razorbacks' latest offensive onslaught came on a night the nation's No. 1 pitching staff started its No. 1 pitcher.
Arkansas chased Tennessee ace right hander Garrett Stallings after a season-low 3 2/3 innings in which he allowed a season-high 8 runs on 10 hits. He hadn't allowed more than 3 earned runs in any start prior to Saturday.
Stallings (7-3) entered with a 1.82 ERA, the fourth-best ERA in the SEC.
The Razorbacks scored four against Stallings in the third inning on a solo home run by Jordan McFarland and a three-run home run by Casey Martin before an out was recorded. Arkansas scored four more in the fourth on RBI hits by Trevor Ezell, Heston Kjerstad and Dominic Fletcher.
Stallings shut down Arkansas through two innings, but began to elevate his pitches in the third. The Razorbacks' scouting report was to be patient and wait on pitches high in the zone.
"I think once we kind of broke it open there he tried to get the ball up more and we definitely took advantage of that," McFarland said. "We had several hits a row in that inning and the next inning we did it again. The hitting tonight was kind of infectious."
Arkansas had 18 hits, including four home runs and six doubles.
The game went so well that McFarland and Christian Franklin, Arkansas' No. 8 and 9 hitters, combined to go 6-for-7, reached base in nine of 10 plate appearances and scored six runs.
"It’s always fun when you get to go up against a pitching staff like them, one of the better ones in the nation from what everyone has been saying,” said Kjerstad, who was 3-for-5 with 5 RBI, including 2 home runs. “When you match up against a pitching staff like that, we all love the challenge and the competition, and it brings the best out of us hitters.”
Tennessee (31-13, 9-11) entered the series with an NCAA-low team ERA of 2.68, but has allowed 26 runs (25 earned) on 34 hits through this weekend's games.
Consider that in their first 18 SEC games, the Volunteers allowed 62 earned runs against a schedule that included Auburn, Vanderbilt, Georgia and Mississippi State.
"Offensively we’re hot, but I think on the other side of it you’re bound to have a game or two where things don’t go your way or you run into a hot team,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “It’s maybe just a perfect storm of things right now.”
Arkansas' lineup has been on a tear since it was shut down in a 12-2 loss to Vanderbilt two weeks ago. In the past six SEC games, the Razorbacks have scored 67 runs and recorded 87 hits.
It started with a 14-12 comeback win over Vanderbilt in the series finale on April 14, continued last week with a pair of blowout wins over Mississippi State and has bled into the first two games this weekend. All three of those teams have pitching staffs among the top six in the conference.
“When it’s going good you’ve got to get as many wins as you can, get as many runs as you can,” Van Horn said. “Our offense has just been seeing the ball good; a lot of timely hits and just done a great job. It all started a couple of weeks ago and we’ve hit pretty well."