FAYETTEVILLE - Piecing everything together, that's the secret. At least it is for a struggling baseball team desperate for a Southeastern Conference win.

And Saturday - in front of a season high crowd of 7,387 in Baum Stadium - Arkansas was able to fill in all the pieces to the puzzle at just the right time. In doing so, the Razorbacks grabbed a much-needed 5-4 win against Auburn to even the three-game series with the Tigers heading into today's 1:05 p.m. rubber match.

"I just thought it was a solid game by our team," Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. "And I told them if we wouldn't have played good defense or pitched the way we did, we would have lost that ballgame because Auburn played extremely well too.

"So it was a good win for us."

It started with pitching. After spending the entire season in the bullpen, Justin Wells was sharp in his first start. Working into the eighth inning, Wells allowed just four runs and six hits while striking out five. The remaining work was done by Stephen Richards, who picked up his first save with two scoreless innings of relief.

"I thought (Wells) was tremendous," Van Horn said. "He went into the eighth inning on a Saturday and saved our bullpen. And really, he gave us a chance to win."

Then there was the defense, which played almost flawless baseball with the exception of a harmless throwing error by catcher Ryan Cisterna.

And finally - and perhaps most importantly for this team - there was the hitting.

Arkansas (17-12, 3-7 SEC) got the ball rolling in the third inning, scoring two runs thanks in part to two Auburn errors. But unlike Friday, the offense didn't stop after one early push.

With the Tigers (19-12, 5-6) on their heels all day long, the Diamond Hogs never gave in, scoring two seventh inning runs to stay out in front for good. Cisterna led off the seventh with a double and scored on a sacrifice fly by Sean Jones. But it was Ben Tschepikow's decision to take second on a passed ball which proved to be the most critical play of the inning as Logan Forsythe followed with an RBI single to put Arkansas ahead, 5-3.

"Just little small executions, doing that was the turning point of the game," Forsythe said. "That's what got us that extra run (in the seventh), that baserunning by (Tschepikow) and that's what made the game right there."

Arkansas now has a chance to win its first SEC series of the season.

"The game today is one of those games where offense, pitching and defense all came together," Forsythe said. "It was all firing at the same time. You know, we struggled in the past. If our pitching's been good, our hitting's been bad. If our hitting's been good, our pitching's been bad.

"But today Wells did a great job, Richards came in a shut the door and everybody in the lineup had a job to do and they did it."