Season in Shreds: Vols' tourney hopes all but gone after 20-5 clawing from Wildcats

By Joe Kennedy
Daily Times Correspondent

KNOXVILLE -- It was tough to determine who had more trouble Sunday at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.

Sure, the Tennessee baseball team saw its postseason chances fade into the distance, but it was the pigeons that were the big losers -- repeatedly fighting a losing battle as they attempted to fly into gusty winds that wreaked havoc on any ball hit into the air.

But the pigeons will live to see another day. UT's postseason hopes will not, as Kentucky (38-14, 14-13) completed the series sweep thanks to a 20-5 pounding of the Vols (25-27, 11-16) on Senior Day in Knoxville.

"It's not good," Tennessee coach Todd Raleigh said when asked if it was his team's toughest loss to date. "They're all pretty bad to me, each and every loss.

"Sometimes it is what it is. Everybody wants to use that phrase in this generation. But our margin of error for victory is not great. Lately we have been exposed a little bit."

It didn't always look bleak for the Vols as they took an early 1-0 lead in the second inning on a RBI groundout by catcher Blake Forsythe. But the floodgates opened in the third.

The Wildcats used four hits and two walks to push across four in the top half of the third inning, but the Vols once again showed signs of life as they jumped back on top with four runs in the bottom half of the inning.

"It felt like it was going to change right there," said senior Cody Brown, who belted a two-run homer. "Things just didn't work out."

And it can be largely attributed to a recurring theme with the Tennessee program -- lack of pitching. The Vols had no arms to counter the Kentucky hitters, as the Wildcats added five runs in each of the next two innings and firmly squashed the Vols' chance of a trip to Hoover, Ala., for the SEC Tournament.

The first six hitters in the Kentucky order combined to go 13-of-26 and accounted for 16 RBIs, 13 runs scored and nine walks despite being substituted out towards the end of the game.

Tennessee got two hits apiece from Danny Lima and Yan Gomes, who was not in the starting lineup despite entering the game with a .326 batting average. One player making his return to the lineup was senior Shawn Griffin, who had not gotten a starting nod in a week.

Griffin entered the series with the team's third-highest batting average and was second in RBIs and home runs. But Griffin was the victim of the ever-changing lineup of Raleigh, as the coach attempts to find players that buy into his system.

"It's always nice to be back in the lineup," Griffin said. "...It's hard to get used to if you don't know if you are starting every day or where you are going to hit in the lineup. But that's Coach Raleigh's decision. That's how he plays, so you have to adapt to that."

Griffin and the rest of the Vols will now head to South Carolina for the final series of the regular season. While not mathematically eliminated, each game is a must at this point for the Vols.

"We'll just go next week and keep playing," said Raleigh, whose team has now lost nine games in a row and 10 of its last 12 SEC contests. "I don't know what the poker saying is -- a chip and a prayer. So we'll play."