FAYETTEVILLE -- It was a lost weekend for Arkansas' baseball team at Baum Stadium.
Missouri, which came into the Razorbacks' home winless in SEC play, beat Arkansas 10-1 Sunday before an announced crowd of 5,619 to take two of three games in the series.
"A game like this, you pretty much have to flush it," Arkansas center fielder Clark Eagan said. "Not many positives came out of today."
The No. 15 Razorbacks (19-9, 4-5) lost a home weekend series for the first time in more than a year, since LSU took two of three games at Baum Stadium in March of 2015.
Missouri (17-13, 2-7) beat Arkansas 8-5 Saturday night after the Razorbacks rallied to win 7-6 Friday night. Missouri's victory over Arkansas on Saturday was the Tigers' first over the Hogs in nearly 25 years. Sunday's victory had Missouri Coach Tim Jameson feeling better than he did on Friday, when the Tigers fell to 0-7 in SEC play, the losses coming after a 14-6 nonconference start.
"We're still far away from being a complete team and we still have question marks," Jameson said, "but we are certainly a lot better team than we were at the beginning of the season and the beginning of conference play."
Missouri not only handed Arkansas its most-lopsided loss this season, but it marked the first time the Razorbacks didn't score at least two runs.
"It doesn't feel good, I know that," Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said. "It's a combination of a lot of things, but it's not a good feeling at all."
Arkansas starting pitchers Dominic Taccolini, Keaton McKinney and Barrett Loseke combined to go eight innings against Missouri and none got into the fifth inning.
"Obviously, it's the biggest concern right now," Van Horn said of the SEC rotation. "Every now and then you're going to have a game where the starter doesn't do well, but it's tough when the starters have really struggled and we're in that bullpen.
"We're going to wear them down and we can't continue to do that. We've got to have guys that give us quality innings.
"It would be nice to have a starter that could go seven one day and really save that bullpen and give us a chance to win that game."
Taccolini and McKinney established themselves as SEC starters last season, but they may come out of the rotation at Ole Miss this weekend.
Taccolini pitched one inning Friday night after going two innings against Auburn the previous week. McKinney went 3 2/3 innings Saturday night and has gone more than 4 2/3 in two starts this season.
"We'll change it up," Van Horn said of the rotation. "We don't know exactly who we're going to go with yet, but I think you'll see probably a couple of different starters."
Van Horn said closer Zach Jackson, who went four innings Sunday, could move into the rotation along with James Teague. Van Horn said Barrett Loseke, a freshman who has started the last four weeks, may stay in the rotation.
"We've got to change something up," Van Horn said. "We've got to shake it up until we find something that works."
Van Horn talked to the players on the field for several minutes after Sunday's game.
His message?
"Just that it was a bad weekend," Van Horn said. "Some things that need to be done for some guys to get the opportunity to get back on the mound.
"They're going to have to earn it. We're not just going to give it to them because of their name. They're going to have earn their spot back in the rotation, and right now it looks there's a good chance some other people will be pitching this weekend.
"We talked about a lot of stuff. Some of it doesn't need to leave our locker room."
Loseke (1-1) retired the Tigers in order the first three innings, then walked Conner Brumfield leading off the fourth when Missouri scored four runs to take a 4-0 lead.
Brumfield stole second base, and the Tigers got an RBI single from Ryan Howard and an RBI triple from Zach Lavy.
Van Horn brought in Jackson, who allowed an RBI single to Trey Harris, a walk to Brett Bond and an RBI double to Shane Benes.
The Razorbacks made it 4-1 in the seventh inning when they loaded the bases and Austin Catron scored on Darien Simms' groundout, but Missouri center fielder Jake Ring prevented a big inning with a diving catch on a drive by Carson Shaddy for the third out.
Ring's catch saved two more runs from scoring, and Shaddy would have been the tying run.
"He got a great jump and was not to be denied and went headlong and made the catch," Van Horn said of Ring. "If he doesn't catch the ball it's 4-3 and we have a runner at second. Hats off to him. He made the play.
"Missouri played extremely well all weekend and they got a lot of big hits and they made some big pitches. They just played better than us."
The Tigers broke the game open with four more runs in the eighth inning -- including a two-out, three-run home run by ninth-place hitter Kirby McGuire off Josh Alberius -- to push their lead to 8-1.
Arkansas finished 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position while Missouri was 5 of 14.
"Credit their pitchers with doing a good job with runners in scoring position," Van Horn said. "Credit their hitters with putting together two really good innings and putting the game away there in the eighth."
Sports on 04/04/2016