Tennessee Baseball Recap: Vols sweep the Great Danes
The 2024 baseball season is officially underway and the #7 ranked Tennessee Volunteers are 7-1 after winning their last 6 games. Outside of a poor showing against the Oklahoma Sooners in the Shriners College Showcase, the Volunteers have looked every part of a CWS contender and SEC favorite.
This weekend featured the home Volunteers against the University of Albany Great Danes. This was the first series of the season for the Great Danes. Friday’s game featured AJ Rusell on the mound for the Volunteers and Chris Birkman for the Great Danes. Russell pitched 3 innings before being pulled for the winner of the game, Chris Stamos. AJ Causey is credited with the save. The Volunteers took a 5-0 lead through 3 innings after multiple errors by the Great Danes. Blake Burke hit his first homer of the season in the 7th to create an 8-2 lead for the Volunteers. Sloppy play did take over for the final two innings as the Great Danes were able to score three more runs to create a final of 8-5 Volunteers.
Saturday’s game was not as close. The Volunteers’ bats woke up in a major way scoring 9 runs in the 4th inning. Drew Beam was credited with the win for the Volunteers. The Volunteers had 4 different players hit home runs including Kavares Tears, Robin Villeneuve, Dean Curley, and Dalton Bargo. Dean Curley continues to impress in his freshman season and Kavares Tears is cementing himself as a focal point of this lineup. There was no run rule in effect for this game and the Volunteers continued to put on the runs with the top of the 9th being the end of the game with a final score of 21-6. Volunteers officially take the series.
The Sunday starter for the first weekend series was Zander Sechrist. He came out after 2.1 innings and Nate Snead (2-0) came in and got the win. It will be interesting to see who gets the call next Sunday. Robin Villeneuve is officially my MVP of the weekend after hitting another home run making it two for the weekend. The Great Dane pitchers struggled, walking eleven Volunteer batters. The Volunteers took advantage of the free bases scoring 12 runs in a 12-0 shutout to sweep the weekend. This felt like the most complete game of the series and has Volunteer fans ready for what is to come this season.
The Volunteers will be back at Lindsey Nelson Stadium Tuesday for a midweek matchup against High Point and then again, this weekend for a series against Bowling Green.
