Now that’s more like it.
The Tennessee Vols showed up and showed out in their opening game of the 2025 SEC baseball tournament, clubbing the Alabama Crimson Tide 15-10. It was a game that showed what the Vols’ offense can do when it gets rolling. The Vols pounded out 20 hits at the plate in perhaps their finest offensive game of the season, and they did it with just one home run on the day – Reese Chapman’s two-run blast in the eighth inning.
However, what I took away from this game wasn’t the onslaught of runs and hits, which I’m happy about, to be sure. It was the turnaround from a gut punch the team received in the sixth inning. Up 5-2 and with the bases loaded in the fifth with two outs, Bama rolled one over two second baseman Dean Curley. The Vols’ infielder fielded it and fired it to first. The problem is first baseman Andrew Fischer was still running to first, and the ball flew past him before he was ready at the bag. Two runs scored. An abysmal and inexcusable error that you don’t even see at the high school level, or perhaps even lower. Bama would add on two more on a two-out hit to take the lead at 6-5.
That type of error is the kind that the Vols have shrunk from this season. The Arkansas balk last weekend was another example of that. This team hasn’t shown the mental fortitude to bounce back from adversity. That’s been evident in dropping series over the last two months on the series’ final day.
But not on Wednesday. Tennessee answered that mistake by Curley in the opposite way they have – with a show of resilience. They tied the game up in the bottom of that inning. The next inning? They added on 5 runs to take a commanding 11-6 lead, a comfortable margin they’d take to the finish line.
It was just one game, but it was an important one, as Bama and UT are neck-and-neck for a hosting opportunity. And it was an important one in that it should seed the belief in the heads of Tennessee players that just because something isn’t going well, that doesn’t mean it can’t turn around.
Because they’re going to have to erase negative plays and overcome deficits in any postseason to reach Omaha. We’ll find out soon enough if they can do it again.