Connor Noland breaks down masterful performance in Arkansas CWS victory

The Arkansas Razorbacks absolutely throttled the Stanford Cardinal 17-2 in their opening game in the College World Series in Omaha on Saturday night, setting a number of records in the process. Hogs’ ace Connor Noland delivered a masterful performance, only allowing just six hits and two earned runs in 7 2/3 innings of work. The Razorbacks’ pitcher silenced a Stanford batting lineup that came into the matchup averaging nine runs per game in the postseason with 22 home runs, and they’d also won 22 of their last 24 games. After the beatdown of the Cardinal, Noland spoke with the media and he was quick to deflect the attention from himself to his teammates.

“I knew they were going to swing the bat. They’re an aggressive team, they like to put the ball in play. We had the wind blowing in. I get a lot of ground balls normally. I just stuck to the plan. They’re very aggressive. Didn’t get a lot of two-strike counts. They just put the ball in play, and I let the defense work behind me,” Noland said.

Noland pitched an ultra-efficient outing. When he left in the eighth inning with one out remaining, he’d only tossed 79 pitches–with 10 of those coming against Brock Jones in a single at-bat in the sixth inning. He only missed on 24 balls–just 11 in his first five innings–and the count only went to three balls once.

After the game, he also spoke about his improvement in his past few outings and once again deflected to his teammates. “It’s a lot of the same. Just filling up the strike zone, that’s the biggest thing. Getting ahead in head counts, getting them to take uncomfortable swings, that’s really been the big thing the past three weeks. Just get ahead and let my defense work. And it worked today,” Noland said. He finished one out shy of a historic performance. The previous CWS record for the fewest pitches thrown in a eight-inning performance was 84 pitches from Stanford’s John Hudgins back in 2003.

The victory by Arkansas was the largest win ever by an SEC team in the College World Series. Not only that, the ‘Hogs put up the most hits and runs in program history in a CWS game, among other records. The 17-point throttling was the most lopsided victory in Omaha in 34 years and tied for the fourth largest margin ever.

Connor Noland was a four-star quarterback prospect

A former four-star quarterback prospect in high school, Noland used to play quarterback for the Razorbacks, which makes his journey as the starting pitcher for the ‘Hogs even more remarkable. According to the On3 Consensus Rankings for the 2018 cycle, he was rated as the No. 27 quarterback prospect in America. As a high school baseball prospect for Greenwood High School (Greenwood, Arkansas), he led his team to a 4-0 victory over Benton–lifting them to the 6A state championship crown. Noland struck out 12 batters in the state championship game, bringing his best stuff when it counted the most.

On3’s Jonathan Wagner also contributed to this article.