Tennessee baseball clinches share of SEC with two wins vs. Georgia: Three takeaways from series

For the first time since Todd Helton was playing on Rocky Top, Tennessee baseball has won an SEC Championship. The Vols, ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in every outlet, took two of three at home against the Georgia Bulldogs this weekend, who are anywhere from No. 22 to unranked, to clinch at least a share of the regular season SEC Championship.

Tony Vitello’s team took the first game 5-2 Thursday, and they won 9-2 on Friday. They missed an opportunity to clinch the regular season title outright Saturday by allowing five runs in the seventh inning to lose 8-3. Still, if the Arkansas Razorbacks lose one more game, and UT wins one of its three games next week at the Mississippi State Bulldogs, they’ll clinch it outright.

The Dawgs are now 33-18 and 14-13 in league play, while the Vols are 45-7 and 22-5 in league play. UGA will next host the Presbyterian Blue Hose Tuesday before closing out the regular season next weekend against the Missouri Tigers. Before closing out their season at MSU, UT will host the Belmont Bruins Tuesday. Here are three things we learned from Tennessee baseball’s series win.

1. It’s still all about the home runs.

A team that has been living off the long ball all year did it again. UT scored 17 runs over the series, and eight of them came off of seven home runs. Three solo shots were the difference in their 5-2 win Thursday, as Trey Lipscomb went long once and Blake Burke went long twice.

Evan Russell went long twice Friday with Luc Lipcius adding a homer. On Saturday, Lipcius added another homer. Runs were manufactured too, but the primary way of scoring for the Vols has been homers all year, and that was pretty much the case in this series.

2. Pitching was phenomenal before Saturday.

Chase Dollander and Blade Tidwell got the starts Thursday and Friday respectively. Both allowed just one run in six and four innings respectively, and they both struck out six. Although Chase Burns allowed a run Friday in less than two innings, he did strike out three. Redmond Walsh allowed no runs and picked up a save that day.

Camden Sewell allowed on run in three innings Friday, and Mark McLaughlin and Kirby Connell each pitched an inning, allowing no runs. Then came Saturday. Ben Joyce allowed three runs in four innings thanks to two homers in the fourth. Drew Beam and Redmond Walsh combined to allow five in the seventh. That cost Tennessee baseball dearly.

3. Strikeouts and poor baserunning led to missed opportunities.

Over the weekend, the Vols left 23 runners stranded. In the first game, they had a runner on second with no outs in the first and runners on first and second with no outs in the ninth. Two strikeouts followed the latter. They had the bases loaded in the fifth with one out and only got one run, off a walk, surrounded by two strikeouts.

On Saturday, Tennessee baseball had runners on second and third with one out in the first, but Drew Gilbert was thrown out at second after Trey Lipscomb had a flyout. That combined with Christian Scott being caught stealing Friday made for poor baserunning.

Meanwhile, in the fourth inning Saturday, they had the bases loaded with no outs but only got a run walked in surrounded by three strikeouts. The sixth and the eighth innings saw runners on first and second with no outs. Three and two strikeouts respectively followed, and a total of one run came out of both. That cost them the shot to win the SEC outright.