On a chilly, overcast Wednesday night at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, the UT baseball team’s bats were hot, demolishing the Morehead State Eagles 13-2.

Vols shortstop Zach Osborne was coming off hitting two home runs and driving in a career-high five RBIs against Marshall on Sunday. How did he follow that performance? He was not recorded out until the eighth inning on Wednesday.

The sophomore from Louisville, Ky., hit a grand slam in his first at-bat in the first inning, driving the ball about 330 feet, just over the left-field fence.

The blast made the game 6-0, and the Eagles would not escape that tumultuous first before a RBI single from second baseman Khayyan Norfolk pushed the score to 7-0.

Osborne said the timing of the home run was crucial for the Vols.

“It was huge,” he said. “We’ve been known in the past to kind of … sit around on our heels, and then at the end we’ll jump on them. So it was great, coming out in the first inning and bouncing on them.”

UT head coach Todd Raleigh said the game’s starter Rob Catapano twisted his ankle on Tuesday. So the team did not know how long he could go, but the overall performance of the six Vol pitchers in the game pleased him.

“(Catapano) could have went longer today, but our pitching was so good tonight,” Raleigh said. “We brought in some pretty good guys in the end there. This is, far and away, the best pitching we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

And the Eagles seemed to never recover from that first inning, when Eagles starter Tyler Hieneman gave up three hits, three walks and one hit-by-pitch. Hieneman was chased from the game after only pitching two-thirds of an inning and being charged with five earned runs.

All the while, the Zach Osborne Show continued. In the very next frame – the top of the second – the Eagles loaded the bases immediately with two basehits and a hit-by-pitch. But Osborne charged a bounding ball toward shortstop and flipped to Norfolk to begin a double play that stifled a potential Eagles’ comeback.

In the Vols’ half of the second inning, the hit parade continued for Tennessee when a Matt Hamaker solo shot – his third homer of the season – made the game 8-1. After third baseman Matt Duffy walked and Osborne hit a basehit off the glove of Eagles second baseman Travis Redmon, right fielder Charley Thurber drove both Duffy and Osborne home with a two-out single to balloon the score to 10-1.

Osborne added a slicing double to the left-field wall in the fourth inning to put him at just a triple away from hitting for the cycle.

His first attempt to do so in the sixth inning proved fruitless, as a pitch hit him on the left shoulder. He ended up scoring as part of a three-run Vols inning, thanks to a wild pitch and outfielder P.J. Polk’s two-run double, which made the score 13-1.

Osborne’s last opportunity at hitting for the cycle came in the bottom of the eighth inning, with fellow Pleasant Ridge Park High School graduate Cody Gibson on the mound for the Eagles.

Osborne said he was not thinking about the cycle when the chance for one arose.

“No, I try to stay away from that,” he said. “I was just trying to put a good swing on the kid’s pitch. Actually the pitcher, I went to high school with him, so it was kind of fun to experience that. But I was just trying to put another good swing on the ball.”

He did make major contact with the ball but fell short, popping out toward the left-center field gap.

A ninth-inning home run from Eagles left fielder Andrew Deeds made the score 13-2, but it was ultimately too little too late for a team that had its top three spots in the batting order go a combined 0-for-12 in the game.

Luck of the Irish

In a game where the Vols did not seem to need any luck, they sported green jerseys in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

“(The green jerseys were) just something we’ve had,” Raleigh said. “We didn’t order them or anything. They were just in there. Kids like them a little bit, so we had them in there, so why not? Actually the green and orange looks OK.”

Osborne, who said his recent outings have bolstered his confidence going into conference play, also enjoys the uniforms.

“It’s something different, something cool,” Osborne said. “We like it. It’s a tradition now, I guess.”

The team had more luck in them this year than in 2009 when the Vols donned them for a 5-2 loss to Coastal Carolina.

Hawn mans first base again

Cody Hawn also went back to fielding first base on Wednesday. Following a return from an arm injury, he had served as the team’s designated hitter for 13 straight games.