Zach Root embarrasses Texas in opener, snags Razorbacker of the Week

In a weekend studded with stellar performances as the Arkansas Razorback baseball team pulled off a three-game series sweep of the No. 1 ranked Texas Longhorns at Baum Walker Stadium, the tone was set in Game One on Thursday by Razorback junior left-handed pitcher Zach Root. Root delivered the probably the best game of his college career by pitching eight scoreless innings while giving up only two hits to earn this week's Razorbacker of the Week nod.

Razorbacker of the Week: Zack Root

The junior left hander, who transferred to Arkansas this season from Eastern Carolina, raised his record to 6-3 with a 3.93 earned run average on the season and has emerged as Arkansas' No. 1 starter in recent weeks. But to open the Texas series, Root rose to the occasion with a career-high 11 strikeouts and only a pair of walks against a Texas team that had won 10 straight-series and held a five-game lead at the time in the Southeastern Conference standings.

"Obviously, (he pitched) eight innings of shut out baseball against a very very good team," Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said after the game. "I feel like once we got the lead, he continued to get better. He didn’t start nibbling and working for strikeouts. He was just trying to get outs and it seemed like his breaking ball got a little better. Maybe over the second half of the game it got a little tighter but he kind of got it all going. He had a really good change up. He had it going away with a lot of good sink.

He did a really good job of getting the lead off man out and throwing strikes. He got a double play ball. That was real big after we had just scored."

Arkansas (38-9, 17-7 SEC) previously held the No. 1 ranking in the SEC and the national polls before losing three series in a row — at Georgia, at home against Texas A&M and at Florida — coming into the Texas series. With Arkansas starting pitcher's struggling most of the season, Arkansas pitching coach Matt Hobbs challenged Root to turn things around and keep the Razorbacks in contention for an SEC regular season title with No. 1 Texas, No. LSU and No. 7 Tennessee left on the schedule.

"Coach Hobbs came up to me the other day and said the fans don’t buy tickets  to see me go four innings. So I kind of took that to heart and went out there and doubled that," Root said. "It was kind of important. It boosted my confidence and probably, honestly the confidence of the team. We were going to go out there to battle. The starting pitching hadn’t been the best on the team. It wasn’t where everyone wanted it to be so it was kind of going out there and having a good start was really important for all the hitters so they could get a little bit more relaxed and not have to play from behind all the time."

That confidence not only carried over for the rest of the game for the 9-0 game-one win. It also carried over to Friday's 6-1 victory as Gage Wood and Gabe Gaeckle teamed up for their second dominant tag-team pitching performance in as many weeks. Then in Saturday's series finale, Arkansas' hitters did what they've done most of the season by overwhelming opposing pitchers in a 13-8 slugfest paced by Reese Robinett's two-homerun, six-rbi breakout performance off the bench.

It all started with Root setting the tone in the opener and ended with Arkansas suddenly two games back of Texas with two weeks left in the regular season — and the head to head tie breaker. Will McEntire secured the win out of the bullpen by striking out the Texas side in the ninth inning on Thursday.

"We felt like (Root) was going to have a good night," Van Horn said. "Obviously, you can’t predict he was going to go eight innings, but he was really good for three innings last weekend. It was 92 degrees. The fourth and fifth innings were not so good and his pitch count got up so we were keeping and eye on hinm in the fourth and fifth inning. 

We were feeling pretty good because we had built up a five run lead. I think that’s when the got the lead off man on and he got a double play ball. Again that was the inning and it seemed like he was rolling after that."

Van Horn seems to have finally found his day-one starter, while Gaeckle — the previous day one starter — settles back into his familiar role as a bullpen ace alongside Aiden Jimenez.

"He’s a good pitcher. There are a lot of good hitters in this league," Van Horn said. "They stack those lineups pretty good and fight you. It’s not always going to go your way but he’s learned out to handle it. He just came out the next weekend and was ready to go."