Tennessee baseball arrived at the ballpark in good spirits on a rubber match Sunday.
The pregame was great. The prep was good. The dugout energy mimicked what Josh Elander wanted to see out of his team in a series-defining finale. After nine innings at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, the Golden Flashes emerged from the visiting dugout with a 9-5 win over Tennessee — taking back-to-back games on opposing turf.
Baseball is not a game of vibes. It is a game won between the white lines, and Kent State landed the fatal blows when Tennessee could hardly dish a jab.
“That’s baseball, the ball’s not going to bounce your way,” Elander said. “But you got to play catch a little bit better, got to keep the ball in front a little bit better and limit those free passes, which we didn’t do again today.”
Tennessee committed two errors, surrendered seven walks and four hit batsmen, while delivering three hits with runners on base in nine opportunities.
The bottom seven of Tennessee’s order combined to hit 2-for-23 and went hitless with runners aboard. Outside of Jay Abernathy and Henry Ford’s five hits at the top, the remainder of the order served little use for Elander.
Response to adversity was not the strong suit on Sunday. Kent State scored in four different innings. The Vols responded just once — aided by a two-run error, the Golden Flashes only of the day.
In innings following a Kent State run, Tennessee hit 4-for-15 (.266) with one earned run. It’s inflated by a three-hit fifth inning where the Vols matched with three runs.
“When you get punched in the mouth, you got to punch back,” Henry Ford said. “Too many zeros after they score. I can’t have that, that’s unacceptable and we got to be better with that.”
Over the final four innings, the Vols pieced together one hit. After Stone Lawless’s bloop single with two outs in the sixth was the last before Kent State retired the final 10 Tennessee batters that stepped to the plate.
“I think early in the year, sometimes guys are maybe looking at that scoreboard a little bit too much to see what batting average may be or whatever,” Elander said. “So we just got to get them locked back into on some quality bats and what is the task and how do I execute? Because, one through nine, there’s guys that have done it at a high level for a long time, and I still got a lot of confidence that we’ll move forward.”
The results would say Tennessee pressed at the plate when it trailed. Despite the deficit, though, the players did not see it as pressing.
“I don’t think anybody’s really worried about what’s going on the scoreboard,” Jay Abernathy said. “Elander says that all the time. Just scoreboard doesn’t tell the story.”
Tennessee will return to the diamond with problems that need to be solved. Bellarmine is next up for the midweek showing on Tuesday, Feb. 24 at 4 p.m. ET.
“You can talk about doing, or you can actually do it,” Elander said.
