STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More Baseball

• Hernandez makes a name for himself in Cape Cod league
• Forsythe, Liles play key role in Coastal Plain title
• Farragut pitcher Cooper commits to Ole Miss

Share and Enjoy [?]

Get Reprints

Want to use this article? Click here for options!

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - When he was on, Nick Hernandez looked every bit the part of a Friday night ace.

Except the Tennessee left-hander couldn't quite sustain the effort for nine innings at Arkansas (21-16, 6-9 SEC). The Vols suffered a bitter 5-4 defeat before 3,056 at Baum Stadium Friday.

What looked like a promising beginning to a pivotal six-game SEC road swing deteriorated for the Vols (22-15, 9-7), who attempt to even the series today at 3:05 p.m. after dropping into a tie with Florida in the Eastern Division. South Carolina is alone in second place at 10-6.

The game ended with a Tennessee rally in the ninth falling short. After Arkansas reliever Stephen Richards seemed in control by striking out the first five hitters he faced, the Vols pulled within a run and loaded the bases with one out and two of their better hitters up. But catcher Yan Gomes, who earlier hit a home run, struck out on a Richards breaking ball, and Cody Brown popped out to right to leave the bases loaded.

"It's something that I can learn from. But we'll get them back tomorrow," Gomes said. "It's pretty frustrating. Nick came out and pitched his butt off. It was kind of sad that we couldn't come through for him."

Throwing a career-high eight innings and being credited with a complete game was little consolation for Hernandez (1-3). The big blow was .198-hitting Ryan Cisterna's two-run home run in the seventh that snapped a 3-3 tie. Hernandez allowed five earned runs on eight hits but struck out five without a walk.

"He pitched good enough to win," said Tennessee coach Todd Raleigh, whose team stranded nine runners. "I think we did a good job of coming back and in the ninth we had a tremendous opportunity. We had them on the ropes with a left-handed pitcher (Richards) against our two righties in the middle. We just chased some bad pitches."

Hernandez threw perfect innings in the first, third, fourth, sixth and eighth. But he allowed a Jeff Nutt home run to open the second and had to pitch out of a first and third jam to keep the damage in that inning minimal.

He ran into further difficulty in the fifth after Arkansas? Nos. 8 and 9 hitters, Cisterna and Scott Lyons, singled with two outs. Aaron Murphree pinch-hit for struggling and banged up Razorback leadoff hitter Sean Jones.

Murphree was in a major slump but hit a two-run triple to put the Razorbacks ahead. It was the first extra-base hit since March 15 for Murphree and first RBI since March 29. He was batting .167 in SEC play.

The play typified the Vols' frustration. Both center fielder Kentrail Davis and left fielder Shawn Griffin converged around the ball at the same time, but there seemed to be confusion between them. Davis seemed to misjudge where the ball was going to land.

"According to what they said, neither one of them called it and it looked (Davis) went past it, which is odd," Raleigh said. "My guess is they both looked up at each other and lost where they were."

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.