FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Despite his team’s NCAA aspirations taking a roundabout on Saturday night, TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle found consolation in losing a heavyweight fight to Arkansas and its top starter Isaiah Campbell.
“Thank goodness he can’t pitch again this weekend,” Schlossnagle said.
This part of Arkansas is full of tall tales. At 6-foot-4, you can include Campbell.
Unfortunately, for TCU, he’s no myth, not by a long shot, as the handcuffed Horned Frogs can now attest.
Horned Frogs hitters met their foil on Saturday night in front of 10,614 excitable Razorbacks fans at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Campbell left them baffled for all of a career-high tying eight innings in TCU’s 3-1 loss in the NCAA tournament’s Fayetteville Regional.
The Frogs had only one opportunity for a key hit in the game with runners on first and third with one out in the seventh. They could muster only Zach Humphries’ sacrifice fly.
“We needed a ball in the gap. It’s hard to get off a guy like Campbell,” Schlossnagle said. “I thought Campbell was outstanding. We didn’t get very many good swings on him at all.
“When your hitters are taking fastballs for third strikes, that’s telling you his off-speed pitches are in the dome of our hitters. That’s what a great pitcher does.”
Not all is lost for TCU.
The Horned Frogs (33-27) will play Central Connecticut State at 2 p.m. Sunday in an elimination game. The plan, with a victory, is a rematch with the Razorbacks in the championship round at 8 p.m. Sunday.
Schlossnagle appeared to be leaning toward starting right-hander Jake Eissler and saving Jared Janczak for a second game with Arkansas. Mike Appel is the probable starter for Central Connecticut State (31-22), which won the school’s first NCAA tournament game against Cal on Saturday afternoon.
If TCU can win twice, they’ll play Arkansas (43-17), unbeaten in two games, a third time on Monday.
The good news in that scenario for the Frogs – as Schlossnagle noted — is that they won’t have to face Campbell again.
They had no answers to the riddle he threw at them. Campbell was sticking multiple pitches in the strike zone, making it hard for TCU’s hitters to guess.
The junior from Olathe, Kan., gave up one run, four hits and a walk in a second-round game featuring two of college baseball’s best pitchers. Campbell and Nick Lodolo are both expected to be among the first college pitchers selected in Major League Baseball’s amateur draft this week.
Campbell won this round.
The TCU lefty was Campbell’s equal for three innings before losing his control in the fourth.
Lodolo walked three hitters and hit a batter in the fourth while throwing 29 pitches. He escaped unharmed, as he did in the fifth after working around a double and a walk in a 23-pitch inning.
“I just lost it there. I don’t know why,” said Lodolo. “I feel like when I regained it when I needed to. I made the pitches in the fourth inning with the bases loaded to keep them off the board.”
Schlossnagle surmised it might have been the energy Lodolo expended in the first few innings, feeding off the crowd. Lodolo hit 97 and 98 mph, something he hasn’t done since early this season.
The Frogs stayed in the game, until a slip in the sixth.
The sixth, a bountiful harvest for TCU the night before in a victory over Cal, was a hex on Saturday.
These games often come down to a seeing-eye ball or a mistake. It was a lot of both for TCU.
Lodolo gave up a leadoff single and was relieved by Haylen Green, who delivered the ground ball TCU sought.
The first batter Green faced, Jack Kenley, hit a comebacker to the mound. Green turned and threw a strike to shortstop Adam Oviedo to get the lead runner. But Oviedo didn’t come up clean with the throw. Second base umpire Frank Sylvester called Heston Kjerstad, the runner, out, ruling Oviedo was making a transfer to throw to first.
Kjerstad, however, was ruled safe after a replay review showed Oviedo simply dropped the throw.
“Sometimes replay is awesome,” Schlossnagle said. “Sometimes it stinks.”
Arkansas didn’t let that opportunity slip.
Two batters later Jacob Nesbit slapped a base hit to left to load the bases, and the next hitter, Casey Opitz, in the 9-hole, found a hole in the infield, slapping a two-run base hit through the middle.
Trevor Ezell, who had three doubles, followed with a run-scoring double to right.
Lodolo (6-6) finished with a line of one run on four hits and four walks while striking out six over five innings.
Campbell (11-1), a Golden Spikes semifinalist, has yet to allow more than three earned runs in an outing this year and hasn’t given up more than three walks in 28 consecutive outings.
Campbell retired the first eight hitters he faced before Oviedo’s two-out single in the third.
“He showed why he’s one of the best pitchers in the country,” Humphries said. “He had good stuff and worked both sides of the plate. It was not a good night hitting against him.
“He’s got really good velocity, and two really good breaking balls, really good off-speed in general. When he can throw all four of those for strikes you really can’t eliminate anything.”
Arkansas erased Jake Guenther’s one-out base hit with a 4-6-3 double play in the fourth. Campbell left Oviedo, who walked, stranded in the sixth.
“We got the ground ball we wanted on Opitz, but the throw just eluded Adam a little bit,” Schlossnagle said. “A great ballgame. We look forward to playing more baseball tomorrow.”
Particularly with Campbell finished.
