University of Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Vol Baseball Falls to Vanderbilt, 14-3
March 29, 2015 | Baseball
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Tennessee Volunteers fell behind early in the series finale against Vanderbilt and could not make up the deficit, as the Vols took a 14-3 loss on Sunday afternoon at Charles Hawkins Field.
Tennessee finished the series at Vanderbilt 1-2 and with the loss, the Vols move to 11-13 on the year, 2-7 in SEC play.
Vanderbilt put a seven spot on the board in the bottom of the first, including a grand slam home run from 'Dores first baseman Zander Wiel. Tennessee's pitching staff struggled as the Vols saw three different pitchers take turns on the mound over the first three frames. Starter Hunter Martin went 0.1 inning before being relieved by Steven Kane in the first. Lefty Zach Warren later came in for Kane in the third and went 2.1 innings in his first relief appearance of the year for Tennessee.
"I really felt that we showed up with the will to win," Head Coach Dave Serrano said. "But you can't get one-third of an inning from your Sunday starter and expect good results. That makes it hard on your pitching and hard on your team when you're fighting from behind. When you give up seven in the first inning and two runs in the second inning, you're in a deficit that's hard to come back from.
"I believe that because of [Vanderbilt's] struggles throwing strikes, we were a hit or a good at-bat away from getting back into this game. That's what we have to learn as a team, especially in Sunday games. There are 27 outs that need to be played and I thought we were a good at-bat or a ball hit in the gap away from being back in this game. We took some sloppy at-bats and left too many guys on when we got some free passes but today was about pitching. We didn't pitch and that was very uncharacteristic of us."
The Commodores plated two runs in the second to make it a 9-0 difference. In the fourth, the Vols scratched two runs across on a two-out rally, started by a standup double by center fielder Derek Lance. First baseman Nathaniel Maggio knocked a single to right field before catcher David Houser then hit an RBI-double. Right fielder Chris Hall later hit a sacrifice fly to center, allowing Maggio the chance to tag and score on the throw to the infield cutoff.
The Commodores went on to score three more runs in the fifth and Tennessee chipped away at the lead, as Hall took his second hit-by-pitch free pass of the day and came around to score once in the sixth to make it a 13-3 ballgame.
"With Vincent Jackson going to be down for a while, we're going to need some guys to step up and we need to get Chris Hall going," Serrano said. "He's a young man who had a tremendous fall for us and he's one of the candidates of guys who can fill some innings."
Vanderbilt furthered their lead to 14-3 in the eighth as righthanders Jacob Westphal and Peter Lenstrohm dealt 3.1 combined innings from the hill. Junior Volunteer Jared Pruett made his debut for UT in the eighth and punched his first career hit up the middle in the ninth, but the Vols' ninth ended on via two groundouts and a strikeout to secure the win for Vanderbilt.
"I was very happy for Jared Pruett," Serrano said. "That young man has worked extremely hard each and every day in practice. It was good to get him on this trip with us, good to get his feet wet and he took a great at-bat for us.
"Like I said to the team, in the last out of the game, Nick Senzel hits a ball up the middle, the guy makes a play and Senzel goes hard down the line. There will not be any quit in this team. We're not where anybody wants us to be and we're not where we want to be but there will not be a soul that puts on this uniform and quits, including this coaching staff."
Tennessee returns home to Knoxville briefly before continuing their eight-game road trip to face Arkansas State (April 1) in Jonesboro, Ark., and Ole Miss (April 3-5) in Oxford, Miss.
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