College Baseball: Tennessee sweeps LSU in Knoxville
The Tennessee Volunteers SWEPT the defending national champion LSU Tigers in LNS. This series comes a week after the Vols won a road series at Auburn and destroyed Alabama A&M this Tuesday 20-2. This Tennessee team is shaping up and looks to be a factor in the upcoming SEC and NCAA tournaments.
The first of 3 nationally televised games began Friday Night with a new starter on the mound for Tennessee. Chris Stamos recorded his first start in the orange and white as coach Tony Vitello looked to change up his weekend rotation. Billy Amick had his first game back after missing the last two series due to surgery. The first pitch he saw was a HR to deep left field scoring 2 runs in the bottom of the first. The Vols would add on insurance runs throughout the game including a Dylan Dreiling solo shot in the bottom of the 5th to give the Vols a 6-1 lead. Between Stamos, Causey, and Connell the Vols held off the Tigers allowing only 2 more runs in the 9th to win the first game 6-3.
Drew Beam was on the mound for Saturday’s game and he brought his stuff with him. As did LSU starter Luke Holman. This was a pitcher’s game with only 4 runs scored. Beam did allow a decent amount of hits but the Tigers could not bring in the runs. The Vols did not get a hit until the bottom of the 6th inning when the Vols would take the lead 2-1 and extend that to 3-1 with another HR by Billy Amick. It was great to see Amick back to contributing that quickly after appendix surgery.
Sunday’s finale had the look of an average Tennessee game this season. Blake Burke and Christian Moore combined for 3 homers on the day. Zander Sechrist got the nod on the mound and Aaron Combs closed the game out with some pitches also thrown by Connell and Behnke. LSU star Tommy White scared the Vols with a 2-run homer late in the game. However, that did not matter when the Tigers could not field a routine pop-up and gave the Vols an 8-4 advantage going into the top of the 9th.
This was a huge sweep for the Vols even though this is clearly not the same LSU team that won it all last year. However, Tennessee must turn the page quickly because the Kentucky Wildcats are the surprise of the league and the Vols take a trip to Lexington after playing Bellarmine Tuesday night. If the Vols win this series they are positioning themselves to potentially win the SEC East so there is a lot on the line for this rivalry matchup. GBO!
