Blaine Brown stamped a couple of baseballs, and that was enough for Tennessee baseball to claim game one of Saturday’s doubleheader against Nicholls State.
Fellow transfer Landon Mack shelled nine batters in a 5-1 win over the Colonels. Nicholls State managed a total of five baserunners, while the pitching staff recorded 15 total strikeouts.
Tennessee (2-0) struck first in the opening frame again, courtesy of a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch. The Vols put 18 runners on base, but struggled in runners-on scenarios, hitting 3-for-15 on the afternoon.
The Vols got picked off three times on the base path by the Colonels (0-2). All three came in the middle stages of the game, accounting for three outs between the fourth and fifth innings.
Mack shines
Josh Reynolds’ inaugural Tennessee starting rotation is shaping up to be a strong one through two games.
After Tegan Kuhns spun a gem on Friday night, Landon Mack followed with another strong outing as a starter against Nicholls State on Saturday afternoon. Mack went six innings, allowing four hits and a walk while striking out nine batters. He tallied 83 pitches in the win.
He did give up the first run of the season — a home run — but utilized his high 90s fastball and arsenal of offspeed pitches to record four innings where he retired the side in order. His most efficient of which was a five-pitch sequence in the sixth inning where he sat down batters on a groundout and two flyouts.
Mack’s nine strikeouts mark a career high for the sophomore transfer. He fanned a previous-best eight batters in an April 2025 game against Minnesota while pitching for Rutgers.
Cam Appenzeller took over to begin the seventh inning and matched Mack with a 1-2-3 frame of his own.
Fourth inning tribulations
Tennessee brought forth a polarizing fourth inning.
Mack got touched up for an opposite-field blast, the first run the Vols have given up this season. Nicholls State three-hole hitter Caston Thompson smashed a 95-mph 2-0 pitch from Mack to the porches in left field.
He surrendered three hits during the frame after allowing just one in the prior three innings. After the one-out homer, Mack induced a groundout, then back-to-back singles snuck through. He closed the inning with a looking strikeout to preserve the 1-1 tie.
Chris Newstrom sparked the Vols in the home half of the first. He drew a one-out walk to flip the order back to the top. Henry Ford smoked a single through the left side of the infield. With two runners aboard and one out recorded, Blaine Brown smashed a 111-mph blast to the left side of the scoreboard to cushion a new lead at three runs.
Rice transfer punishing baseballs
Josh Elader said in the preseason that Brown regularly hits baseballs 110-plus mph. He’s proved every bit of that through two games this season.
Brown recorded a 3-for-5 day at the plate, highlighted by a pair of 111-mph blasts against Nicholls State in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader. The first traveled 374 feet in a hurry over the wall in right-center field to break the Vols out of a tie game. His next stamped the centerfield batter’s eye to provide a security blanket at 5-1 in the sixth inning.
The Rice transfer is meshing in the two-hole of Tennessee’s lineup. He’s now recorded back-to-back multi-hit games to begin the season, pushing his average to .500 on the year.
