Tennessee baseball sweeps NCAA Regional: Three takeaways
For the first time in school history, Tennessee baseball has reached back to back NCAA Super Regionals. The Vols will now be looking to reach back to back College World Series appearances for the first time in history as well. They will have to face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a three-game series next week to get there.
In a weekend that saw an erroneous report by ESPN on Evan Russell and PEDs that had to be retracted, forcing Danny White to comment, and one that involved news of renovations to Lindsay Nelson Stadium, the Vols won all three games of their regional at the stadium. They are now 56-7 on the year.
Rocky Top, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, beat the Alabama State Hornets 10-0 Friday, the Campbell Fighting Camels 12-7 Saturday and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 9-6 Sunday to advance. Here are three things we learned from Tennessee baseball’s impressive performances in front of its home crowd.
1. The Vols were the comeback kids this weekend.
Against both Campbell and Georgia Tech UT fell behind 4-0 and had to come back. In both games they had strong ninth innings, scoring four against Campbell and then six against GT while entering it trailing 4-3. Heck, even against Alabama State, they did most of their scoring late, as seven of their 10 runs came in six innings or later.
Scoring came in numerous ways. They had no home runs but a stolen base against GT. However, 17 of their 22 runs in the first two games came off nine homers, including two from Jordan Beck, Drew Gilbert, Jorel Ortega and Blake Burke along with one from Cortland Lawson.
UT stole nine bases over the weekend and were never caught, with five from Seth Stephenson and one from Evan Russell, Trey Lipscomb, Charlie Taylor and Luc Lipcius. Simply put, they did lots of scoring, and it mostly came late.
2. Bullpen carried Vols to victory.
Clutch late pitching complemented late-inning pitching. Blade Tidwell is an exception here, as he struck out seven and allowed no runs in nearly eight innings Friday. However, Campbell and Georgia Tech built their 4-0 lead with Chase Dollander and Drew Beam on the mound respectively. It took the bullpens to clean up the mess.
Kirby Connell allowed two earned runs Saturday in four innings with Chase Burns allowing one in just over one. Redmond Walsh stepped up and allowed no runs the final inning. Then, Walsh came through for Tennessee baseball Sunday, allowing no runs in the eighth when UT was down 4-3.
He allowed two runs in the ninth and loaded up the bases, putting the winning run at the plate, but he still closed the deal and got the win with a strikeout. Will Mabrey was the star Sunday, though, with no runs and five strikeouts in over five innings. Ben Joyce and Mark McLaughlin both deserve shoutouts for helping to close out Friday with no runs allowed either.
3. Too many defensive mistakes could have proven costly.
Tony Vitello’s team reverted back to its beginning of the year ways. UT committed five errors over the weekend, including at least one in every game. In both 4-0 starts by Campbell and Georgia Tech, they allowed two unearned runs. Campbell scored another unearned run on Connell.
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The first two unearned runs by Campbell came after an error in the third with two outs. Georgia Tech’s first two runs were on a throwing error in the third. Lawson was the biggest culprit with three on the weekend and both errors Sunday, but Beck and Ortega each had one too. Tennessee baseball can’t have that against Notre Dame. It’ll be disastrous.