SEC Baseball Tournament

Championship Bound: Hogs throttle No. 1 seed Florida 16-0

Arkansas pitcher Kacey Murphy throws during an SEC Tournament game against Florida on Saturday, May 27, 2016, in Hoover, Ala.
Arkansas pitcher Kacey Murphy throws during an SEC Tournament game against Florida on Saturday, May 27, 2016, in Hoover, Ala.

HOOVER, Ala. — The Arkansas Razorbacks took their epic tear at the SEC Tournament to another level on Saturday, blasting No. 4 Florida 16-0 with a barrage of four home runs and a complete-game two-hitter from Kacey Murphy.

Chad Spanberger hit two more home runs to bring his tournament total to five while Eric Cole and Dominic Fletcher added one homer each as the No. 13 Razorbacks put a run-rule whipping on the Gators at the Hoover Met.

"Our offense took over again," Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said after the team's most lopsided SEC victory in his 15-year tenure. "It's one of those games as a coach you hope for, but you don't expect."

Arkansas (42-16), which jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first inning, advanced to its fourth SEC Tournament championship game in search of its first title Sunday at 2 p.m. (ESPN2) against LSU. The No. 6 Tigers thumped South Carolina 11-0 in another mercy rule game in the earlier semifinal on Saturday.

Florida (42-16), which is projected to be a national seed in the NCAA Tournament next week, suffered its worst loss of the season.

"Offensively, they're physical, they can run, they've got some guys who can run into the ball and obviously today they proved that," Florida Coach Kevin O'Sullivan said of the Hogs. "If they can get a quality start like that from Murphy like they did today, that's only going to help them down the road.

"So, do I think they have a chance to get to Omaha? Of course, yeah."

Spanberger homered in his first two at-bats against Florida's Brady Singer to give him five home runs and 10 RBI for the tournament.

"What it feels like is kind of like Cloud 9," Spanberger said. "I go out there and I see every pitch lately. I'm trying to get pitches I can hit and putting good swings on them. I'm staying true and trusting my approach."

The left-hander Murphy (5-0) was in control throughout, limiting the Gators to a single and a double, striking out eight and walking three and not allowing a runner to reach third base.

"He just used both sides of the plate with his fastball, and then he'd just dump that curveball over for strikes," said Jonathan India, a Florida infielder whose third inning double was the Gators' first hit.

"When they put up five runs in the first it’s mostly just going out there and establishing the strike zone with the fastball," Murphy said. "Pretty much attacking with the fastball, establish both sides of the plate, then when I get ahead in the count, kind of work in a breaking ball, or show it first pitch of the at-bat to get ahead."

Van Horn said Murphy's work was key in giving the Razorbacks a chance against LSU in the championship game.

"For him to go out and give us a complete game, a seven-inning game, was huge for our bullpen," Van Horn said. "It gives us an opportunity to save some arms for tomorrow."

Murphy's counterpart, the 6-5 sophomore Singer, struggled from the opening batter of the game, Cole, who hit a single off Singer's pitching hand.

Spanberger followed with a towering shot over both fences in right field to spark the Hogs' five-run opening salvo.

"The game plan was to go left-center to left for both lefties and righties, and he kind of just left some pitches over the plate and we put a good swing on them," Spanberger said.

Luke Bonfield and Carson Shaddy sandwiched walks around Fletcher's single to load the bases and Jax Biggers drove in two with a single. Shaddy came home on Greg Koch's sacrifice fly to cap the big inning.

"I think that's the first time Brady's been hit like that the whole year, so credit their hitters," O'Sullivan said. "I think he left the one pitch to Spanberger out over the plate for the first home run. But a bunch of his hits were ground balls through the infield.

"They didn't chase out of the zone. There were some really quality pitches in the bottom half of the zone that they didn't chase and got into some predictable offensive counts."

Jake Arledge led off the second inning with a single and Cole launched his fourth home run into the Florida bullpen beyond the right field fence. Spanberger ended Singer's outing with a solo home run in the second.

The carnage continued, with Arkansas plating two runs in the fourth on Fletcher's two-run homer, four in the fifth and two in the seventh.

Fletcher said the plan against Singer was to "definitely attack the fastball early because we know he throws like 71 percent fastballs or something like that. We went out there and took some good swings on fastballs and got it going."

Spanberger added a double, his third of the tournament, in Arkansas' big fifth inning and went 3 for 6 with 3 runs scored and 3 RBI.

Cole, Fletcher and Biggers all had three-hit games as part of Arkansas' 15-hit attack, which included six extra-base hits.

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