The Hagen Smith and Will McEntire double-dip didn't play out as usual for the Arkansas Razorbacks, but the nation's No. 1 team prevailed anyway with a 5-3 series-opening win over No. 17 Alabama on Friday night in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
The University of Arkansas (30-3, 12-1 SEC) won its 11th consecutive game and improved to 9-0 in weekend series openers, with many of them featuring dominating work from Smith and McEntire.
The Razorbacks built a 5-0 lead but had to hang on late to beat the Crimson Tide for the third consecutive time.
"Give credit to Alabama," Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said. "They made a run at us. We left a lot of runners on early. Had a chance to kind of bust it open, but their pitching staff wiggled out of a couple jams and we kind of had to hold on."
Arkansas remained three games ahead of Texas A&M in the SEC West standings and a half-game behind Kentucky (13-1), which has won the first two games of its series at Auburn, for the overall conference lead. Arkansas, off to its best start in school history, and Texas A&M (30-4), which hammered Vanderbilt 15-0 on Friday night, became the first Division I teams to hit the 30-win plateau.
Alabama (22-12, 4-9 SEC) lost its season-high fifth game in a row.
"I told our guys that I don't believe in moral victories," Alabama Coach Rob Vaughn said. "We came here, we're playing at home, we expect to win and I don't care if we are playing the No. 1 team in the country or who it is. When we have Ben Hess on the mound and we are at home, we expect to win.
"Moral victories fly out the window. But what I saw tonight from our guys is what I did not see the last ... four or five games. I saw fight. I saw toughness, I saw 40 dudes in that dugout just spending everything they had for their teammates."
Ben McLaughlin and Jared Sprague-Lott homered in the first inning to give Smith a 3-0 lead before he ever took the mound.
Sprague-Lott, who had two off days for the midweek sweep of San Jose State, came back refreshed and went 2 for 2 with a pair of walks, a hit by pitch, a stolen base and two runs.
"He had a great night," Van Horn said.
"Over the past couple of weeks, Coach [Nate] Thompson has just been doing a great job with all the hitters coming up with a good approach," Sprague-Lott said. "I just simplified some things and starting to feel good for sure."
Smith (7-0) worked 6 innings and allowed no runs on 2 hits and 3 walks while striking out 6. The junior lowered his earned run average from 1.76 to 1.53 with the six clean innings.
"I thought I threw pretty well," Smith said. "Defense played good behind me and offense scored a bunch of runs at the beginning of the game.
"I threw a lot more cutters today than sliders, so I think that kind of got them swinging. They had a really good approach against offspeed, too. They didn't swing at much offspeed that was out of the zone, so you've got to give credit to them."
Said Vaughn, "I thought we competed against Hagen Smith really hard. I mean I thought we had tough at-bats. The dude punches out 12 to 15 every game and I think, what did he end with, six [strikeouts]? We competed hard."
McEntire worked a perfect seventh inning with two strikeouts but the senior right-hander ran into trouble in the eighth before Stone Hewlett and Gabe Gaeckle stopped the rally.
Gaeckle retired the last five Crimson Tide batters in order to collect his SEC-best sixth save.
Smith took a no-hitter into the sixth inning before leadoff man Gage Miller rapped a single up the middle to open the inning. Justin Lebron hit a one-out single, but Smith responded by getting Will Hodo to pop up to the mound and striking out TJ McCants with his 96th and final pitch.
Alabama had only one runner reach second base through seven innings before breaking through in the eighth against McEntire with four consecutive singles with no outs by nine-hole hitter Bryce Eblin, Miller, Ian Petrutz and Lebron to score two runs.
Van Horn called on the left-handed specialist Hewlett, who issued a walk before allowing a sacrifice fly to TJ McCants to make it 5-3. Gaeckle came on to get a strikeout of pinch hitter William Hamiter and a groundout from Evan Sleight to escape further damage.
Arkansas got busy in the first inning against Hess (3-3), as Wehiwa Aloy singled to cap a nine-pitch at-bat on which he fouled off five consecutive pitches.
McLaughlin fell behind 0-2 before he hammered a 2-2 pitch to center field for his sixth home run of the season, giving Arkansas a 2-0 lead.
Sprague-Lott then drove a 3-1 fastball over the heart of the plate over the left-field wall to make it 3-0 with his fourth home run of the season.
The Razorbacks tacked on two runs in the third inning, with all the action coming with two outs. The rally started when Hess hit Sprague-Lott in the ribs with a fastball. Kendall Diggs smacked a first-pitch single toward the right-field corner to send Sprague-Lott to third base.
Hudson White, also first-pitch swinging, delivered an RBI single into right center. With Nolan Souza at the plate, Hess unleashed a wild pitch and Diggs' feet-first slide beat the throw to Hess at the plate to make it 5-0.
Hess and the Alabama bullpen rose up from there, holding the Hogs without a hit for five consecutive innings. The Razorbacks loaded the bases twice in that span, in the fifth and seventh innings on a series of walks, hit by pitches and an error, but could not produce another run.
Will McEntire