Tennessee baseball is riding a five-game winning streak entering one of the most highly anticipated series of the college baseball season. The 10th-ranked Vols head to LSU to face the top-ranked Tigers in a three-game series.
The Vols bounced back from a disappointing opening weekend in SEC play by sweeping Texas A&M to get back to .500 in conference play. The Tigers have won each of their first two SEC series including an impressive series victory over Arkansas.
Here’s everything you need to know about the weekend series between Tennessee and LSU.
On if the starters will move up a day for the Thursday-Saturday series
“Yeah. I think two days would be drastic is something happened where like at Missouri we played a double header so Burns goes on Sunday. If he were asked to go on Friday I think that could affect a college guy but you talk to these kids and unless they threw 120 pitches I don’t think the SEC schedule messes with them too much. We’re all asked to fluctuate now throughout the year with the TV schedule and of course Hoover.”
On what he knows about LSU
“It’s rowdy. It’s just in the nature. The thing that’s cool about SEC towns and states, and we have our own culture here. It was the first thing I talked about when I got hired, just how friendly and welcoming it is, and we know how our fans are unique. First of all, how large of a fanbase it is. But down there, you got a pretty cool culture, and those people are looking for a party. They’re looking for a reason to tailgate, and then a reason to cheer on the team that they cheer on. There’s other schools down there that have other athletic departments that are really good, but they’re passionate fans. It’s just an environment, and then when you go on the road, in general in our league, it’s difficult. But about that team, you got the core group of guys that have been there for awhile. You gotta be careful about being a fan of other guys when you’re competing against them, but it’s cool to watch some of the guys that are in the league when they’re young and then see them keep getting better and better. And they had some guys that were freshmen paying for them a couple years ago, here, that were already really good, and obviously they’re better now. And then there’s some other guys on the roster that we don’t know yet because we haven’t dove into the scouting report until this thing’s over with with Asheville. But, you know the guys that we recruited, too, that recently or somewhat relatively recently chose to go down there. So there will be some familiar faces, one way or another, and we’ll get a little more familiar with them between now and the first pitch.”
On blocking out outside noise heading into LSU series
“I had it on my notes – you have to be careful about writing notes before a series is over but I was hoping we would win on Sunday. So, we could kind of be back to neutral in the SEC. We all know that makes sense. You want to have a winning record. They need to. I had that written down as a note because this team has taken on more challenges than any team since we’ve been here. We don’t need sympathy and we have talent, so we should win some games. To be fair to these kids, they’ve taken on a lot of stuff that maybe they aren’t the ones who initiated it. I like guys being hyped up but I think some of our guys might have been inflated a little bit with what some o the expectations were when you look at the entire track record. But everything about this group gets lumped into with what went on last year. I could list like seven categories. There’s been other things that we could bring up. It’s just been a really long list of things and ultimately, our guys have to pick which battles they want to fight. They do need to turn off some of the outside noise – whether that’s a Twitter battle, media, rankings, draft projections and other things. Or, do you want to play and play out style? When we played a Grand Canyon, we didn’t have a style. We didn’t have any sayings in the dugout or anything. Well now, we kind of got that going on. They do need to turn off the outside noise and hopefully they get some assistants from people too, or maybe some of the other stuff calms down a little bit. Then they can just go and play and find out if they are better than that given team on that day or not.”
Projected Pitching Matchups
Game One — RHP Chase Dollander (4-2, 3.93 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 53 K, 8 BB, 34.1 IP) vs. RHP Paul Skenes (5-0, 0.59 ERA, 0.53 WHIP, 59 K, 4 BB, 30.1 IP)
Game Two — RHP Chase Burns (2-1, 4.15 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 59 K, 9 BB, 34.2 IP) vs. RHP Ty Floyd (4-0, 2.05 ERA, 0.81 WHIP, 31K, 9IP, 26.1 IP)
Game Three — RHP Drew Beam (3-1, 2.54 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 27K, 8BB, 28.1 IP) vs. RHP Thatcher Hurd (2-0, 3.91 ERA, 1.56 WHIP, 32 K, 15 BB, 23 IP)
Bats To Know
Tennessee
Christian Moore — .360 BA, .524 OBP, 1.137 OPS, 5 HR, 9 XBH, 19 RBI
03/10 – 03/12 — Tennessee Morehead State in Knoxville
03/17 – 03/19 — Missouri swept Tennessee in Columbia
03/24 – 03/26 — Tennessee swept Texas A&M in Knoxville
LSU
03/10 – 03/12 — LSU swept Samford in Baton Rouge
03/17 – 03/19 — LSU won two out of three over Texas A&M in College Station
03/24 – 03/25— LSU won two out of three over Arkansas in Baton Rouge
Prediction
The most anticipated series of the college baseball regular season is here as the Vols head to LSU for a three-game series. LSU and Tennessee were No. 1 and No. 2 in the preseason and while the Vols have gotten off to a shaky start to the season, LSU has remained as the nation’s top-ranked team the entire season.
Alex Box Stadium is one of the hardest places to play in the country and this LSU team is extremely good. It’s an uphill battle for the Vols this weekend in Baton Rouge.
Tennessee’s elite starting pitching hasn’t lived up to its potential so far this season. If the Vols want to take the series in Baton Rouge, they need Dollander, Burns and Beam to be at their best.
