On a cold afternoon at Baum-Walker Stadium, it took a few innings for Arkansas’ bats to heat up against Gonzaga.

The Razorbacks resorted to small ball to jump start their offense and take control of Friday afternoon’s game before cruising to a 9-3 win over the Bulldogs.

Arkansas actually struck first that way, with Casey Martin’s sacrifice bunt moving Matt Goodheart into scoring position and setting up Christian Franklin’s two-out RBI single in the fourth.

However, it wasn’t until the following inning, after Gonzaga tied it up, that head coach Dave Van Horn really dialed up the strategy.

Casey Opitz and Cole Austin hit back-to-back singles to start the fifth and, with 9-hole Robert Moore and his .125 batting average coming to the plate, it seemed like an obvious spot for the Razorbacks to bunt again.

The Bulldogs recognized it and called for a wheel play, where the third baseman charges hard and shortstop leaves his position to cover third in an effort to get the lead runner.

Van Horn had a feeling they might try that, so he gave Moore the sign to pull the bunt back and swing if he noticed them run the wheel. After he took a first-pitch ball, the veteran called time to make sure his 17-year-old freshman knew what he was asking him to do.

He wanted to clarify that it wasn’t a hit-and-run, so he should swing only if it was a strike, and that he could still lay down the sacrifice if Gonzaga called off the play. The biggest key, though, was not bunting into the easy out.

“Basically I wanted to make sure he knew the sign, because he’s still learning them,” Van Horn said. “And I don’t think he knew it, so I called a timeout. That’s basically what I told him.”

Sure enough, Moore got a pitch to hit, pulled the bat back and chopped it right to the spot shortstop Ernie Yake had vacated for an RBI single.

“They threw the first pitch and they were tipping the wheel play very easy because the shortstop was vacating the hole very early,” Moore said. “When we run that play, we have Casey fake it then run over so it's not really tipped. …

“I knew they were going to throw the fastball up because that's a hard pitch to bunt I got a pitch and just tried to chop it where the shortstop was.”

With runners on the corners, Van Horn called for a squeeze bunt by leadoff man Braydon Webb. Even though he showed it on both of the first two pitches of his at bat and the Bulldogs knew what was coming, he placed it perfectly toward first base.

Mac Lardner got to it, but panicked and couldn’t pick up the ball. Webb was officially credited with a sacrifice and reaching on an error, but Van Horn said it would have been a bang-bang play even if he fielded it cleanly.

“The book on Lardner is that he’s a very average fielding pitcher,” Van Horn said. “We tried to take advantage of that.”

Despite being one of the most dangerous power hitters in the country, Heston Kjerstad - who Van Horn has said multiple times is the best bunter on the team - decided, on his own, to follow with a bunt of his own. This time Lardner fielded it, but Kjerstad beat the throw at first for a bunt single to load the bases.

“We work hard on bunting, I can tell you that,” Van Horn said. “We worked all off-season, two months in there, bunting - bunting for hits, off of machines, sac bunting. It might not always look like it, because bunting is really not easy, but we work at it.”

At that point, the talented left-hander was flustered.

A wild pitch brought in another run and then following an intentional walk to Martin - his fourth of the season - to load the bases, the Razorbacks tacked on a fourth run in the inning on a sacrifice fly by Franklin.

That gave Arkansas a 5-1 lead and Gonzaga never got closer than two runs the rest of the way.

Game 3 of the series is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday. It will feature left-hander Patrick Wicklander (1-0, 0.00 ERA) facing the Bulldogs’ preseason All-American, right-hander Alex Jacob (0-0, 6.75 ERA).