On March 10 Erin Gabriel threw her first career no hitter against Illinois State
On March 24 Erin Gabriel threw her first career perfect game against East Tennessee State University.
The 13th perfect game in Tennessee (22-7) history came in a 10-0 victory over ETSU (11-15) in 5 innings, where the Lady Vols had 11 hits and 10 runs on 22 plate appearances.
Despite homeruns from Rainey Gaffin, Megan Geer and Annie Aldrete, the pitcher from Poland, Ohio stole the show with unparalleled efficiency, throwing just 49 pitches on the day while preventing a single base runner.
“Today I just had a goal of being efficient,” said Gabriel “we talked about how over the weekend I wasn’t as efficient with my pitching and I wasn’t getting ahead of batters, so I just went out and had an attack mindset.”
Gabriel’s efficiency shined, with 75.5% of her pitches counting as strikes, striking out five of the 15 batters she faced.
“Well we were planning on taking her out after four,” said co-head coach Ralph Weekly. “But we knew it was a perfect game, and I wasn’t going to take her out with a perfect game.”
The defense behind Gabriel made plays throughout the game as well, starting with Scarlet McSwain who caught two line drives to open the first frame, and ending with Aldrete who threw out a runner on a dropped third strike for the second out of the final inning.
“My defense had my back, I mean I told them ‘I need to get more efficient, I need to throw more strikes'” said Gabriel “they knew I was going to go in there and try to hit my spots and they made every play possible, so this game goes to them.”
On the other side of the plate, the Lady Vols caught fire in the fourth inning, scoring five runs on six hits — all with two outs on the board — to gain enough of a lead to run-rule the Buccaneers. In the inning Geer hit a solo homer followed by Aldrete’s two-run blast, bringing both of their totals up to eight on the season.
“After the first inning, which we struggled a little bit in the first inning and when to full counts and stuff, I just told them get comfortable in the box and see the ball and hit the ball.”
Included in the hitting barrage stretching from the bottom of the second to the bottom of the fourth was senior Cheyanne Tarango registering her first hit of the season after going 0-7 to begin her final year as a Lady Vol.
With the victory over ETSU, the Lady Vols extend their in-state opponent series lead to 111-3, including 16-0 against the Buccaneers.
On Wednesday night the Lady Vols face the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles in the second mid-week game of the week before starting a three game series with Georgia on Saturday.
