Hall takes heat, then brings more

FAYETTEVILLE -- Missouri State pitcher Matt Hall raised some eyebrows earlier this week when he said he didn't think the Baum Stadium crowd would be a factor in the Bears' NCAA Super Regional against Arkansas.

Video of his comments showed up all over social media and drew the ire of Arkansas fans, but Hall backed up what he said by shutting down the Razorbacks on Saturday to force a winner-take-all game at 2 p.m. today to decide which team will advance to the College World Series.

Hall, a junior left-hander, quieted a Baum Stadium record crowd of 12,167 with a complete-game one-hitter in the Bears' 3-1 victory.

"We had a big-game pitcher on the mound and he delivered," Missouri State Coach Keith Guttin said.

Hall made the Razorbacks look like a different team offensively after Arkansas beat the Bears 18-4 Friday.

"I guess the story of the game was really that we just couldn't figure out Matt Hall," Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said. "He mixed it up a lot with his breaking ball, a few change-ups. He spotted his fastball on both sides of the plate and did a tremendous job of keeping us off balance."

Third baseman Bobby Wernes had the Razorbacks' only hit with a single in the first inning. He was then erased on a double play off a line drive to the shortstop by Andrew Benintendi.

"Tip of the hat," Wernes said. "He did an awesome job."

Hall (12-2) threw 125 pitches with the sun beating down and the temperature in the mid-80s, but he said he never felt tired. He threw 132 pitches over eight innings in Missouri State's 5-3 victory over Iowa in last weekend's regional.

"I live for the warm weather," he said. "Anything below 60 degrees I want to stay inside. Today was a perfect day in weather for me."

Arkansas' only run was unearned, when the Razorbacks made it 3-1 in the bottom of the seventh inning. Joe Serrano drew a leadoff walk, went to second when Benintendi walked, advanced on a flyout by Tyler Spoon and scored when shortstop Joey Hawkins couldn't handle a hard ground ball by Clark Eagan.

Hall retired Rick Nomura on a groundout to end the eighth inning. Wernes had followed Serrano's walk by lining out to left field.

"You're just thinking if that ball had dropped in, what might have happened?" Van Horn said. "But give Hall credit. You could tell he didn't want to come out of the game."

Missouri State closer Bryan Young is 7-0 with 16 saves and 1.31 earned run average and didn't throw Friday, but Guttin said he never considered taking out Hall.

"He likes challenges, he likes hot weather, and he likes wearing his camo jersey," Guttin said. "He's not real complicated."

Hall said that after the eighth inning pitching coach Paul Evans told him, "This is your game, go take it."

The Razorbacks' leadoff hitter drew walks against Hall in the seventh, eight and ninth innings.

"Every inning we thought we were going to get to him, and he did a real good job of not letting that happen," Wernes said. "We really didn't get anything going all day offensively, and bottom of the ninth we still had the chance to tie the game with one swing of the bat."

Hall struck out cleanup hitter Spoon swinging on an 0-2 pitch with Wernes on first base after he reached on a fielder's choice groundout.

"We were probably one hit from getting him out of the game," Van Horn said. "We had a couple of shots at him. We just couldn't quite get that big hit."

Hall has a fastball that hits the upper 80s along with a curveball, slider and change-up.

"We couldn't just look for the fastball because he throws the breaking ball for a strike way too much," Van Horn said. "He's kind of got an old-school breaking ball with some downward action on it, and we were swinging over it a little bit and giving up on it sometimes a little early and it dropped in the strike zone."

Hall had eight strikeouts Saturday to increase his national lead to 170 in 126 innings.

"He didn't have his best stuff at the end, but he had enough," Van Horn said. "That last fastball he threw to Spoon was one of his better ones. He let it go and he put it right where he wanted it."

Hall said a key for his success was not falling into a pitch pattern.

"He established all four of his pitches," Missouri State catcher Matt Fultz said. "His change-up was working really well, away to righties. He was painting his slider away from lefties, especially Benintendi, and he was locating his fastball and curveball."

Blake Graham had an RBI single to give the Bears a 1-0 lead in the second inning off Arkansas starter Keaton McKinney (6-2), who lasted 1 1/3 innings before Jackson Lowery came on to pitch 6 2/3 innings.

Missouri State then scored two runs in the third inning -- on Spencer Johnson's RBI single and Graham's RBI groundout -- to move ahead 3-0.

It turned out to be plenty of run support for Hall.

Fultz, who has been Hall's teammate going back to their tee-ball days, said his roommate never has won a bigger game.

"There's been a lot of big ones, but just with what was at stake, you'd have to put it at No. 1," Fultz said. "He's just a big-game pitcher."

Sports on 06/07/2015