When the Tennessee baseball team played Middle Tennessee State on Tuesday, it took nearly four hours for the Vols to secure a 5-4 victory.
The two teams played in another lengthy affair on Sunday during the final game of the Tri-Star Classic at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. This time MTSU came out on top, defeating the Vols 7-5 in 12 innings.
“It changes a week from being a really good week for our team and a step forward to, quite frankly, not a good week,” head coach Tony Vitello said.
The Blue Raiders dugout was just as loud throughout the entirety of the game as it was on Tuesday, which made the loss sting a little more for some of the Tennessee players.
“Those guys treated it like it was their World Series, so take it how you see it, but we don’t like how they talked to us on our field,” sophomore shortstop Andre Lipcius said.
MTSU jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the second inning and added one more in the fourth to make it 4-0.
Brodie Leftridge had been struggling, entering the game 4-of-22. That changed in the fifth inning when he singled home Benito Santiago and Zach Daniels to get the Vols on the board.
That was just the beginning of the Vols’ offense coming alive as they went on to tie the game to 4-4 in the sixth inning on a pair of RBI singles from Lipcius and Brandon Trammell.
“Our guys did a good job in the middle of the game in competing to make it a game, but (it was) too slow of a start, and at the end we didn’t execute as well as they did,” Vitello said.
Lipcius went 3-for-6 at the plate and scored two runs. It was the third three-hit game of the week for Lipcius.
“It shows what you can do when you buy into the mentality you need to be successful,” Lipcius said.
MTSU’s Blake Benefield hit a solo home run in the eighth inning to put the Blue Raiders ahead, 5-4.
In the bottom half of the inning, Santiago doubled home Lipcius to tie the game back up.
The game remained tied for the next three innings before Benefield hit his second home run of the night — this time a two-run shot — to give the Blue Raiders the final edge.
“If your soul is not into it in the tenth and eleventh inning, you don’t have one,” Vitello said. “I think situations like this help bring it out of the guys.”
The Vols left nine runners on base against the Blue Raiders, including a man on second with nobody out in the eighth inning that proved to be a crucial missed chance.
“We have some guys that are getting exploited a little bit because they like to chase high or maybe will chase in the dirt on a breaking ball,” Vitello said. “So those are things we need to analyze a little bit and make sure we are inching forward and getting better at.”
Will Neely made his third start of the season on the mound for Tennessee. Neely threw 4.1 innings, giving up four runs on six hits and two walks.
“You completely throw the law of percentages out of whack when you make mistakes on top of giving up a hit,” Vitello said. “He shot himself in the foot a little too much.”
Neely was replaced by sophomore Will Heflin in the fifth. He went 3.1 innings, allowing four hits and one run. Heflin was relieved by freshman Garrett Crochet, who pitched the final 4.1 innings of the game. He gave up two runs on three hits and struck out four batters.
Tennessee will be back in action when it takes on James Madison at home on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.
