Vols softball team super again
KNOXVILLE — The pitchers are unprecedentedly young by program standards, and the bottom half of the lineup may not be the strongest Ralph and Karen Weekly have coached in their 16 seasons leading the Tennessee softball team.
The results are the same. The Volunteers advanced to the NCAA super regionals for the ninth time in program history with a 3-0 victory over Longwood on Sunday at Lee Stadium, capping an undefeated run through the 13th consecutive regional Tennessee has hosted under the Weeklys.
“These kids have overachieved,” Ralph Weekly said. “It’s all the athletes. We have one senior out there. We have a lot of young kids playing. To be honest with you, when we sat down and looked at our schedule, we weren’t even sure we were going to make the SEC tournament.”
With an overall record of 47-10, the eighth-seeded Vols will host Texas A&M (45-10) this week in a best-of-three series. The winner will go to next month’s Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City.
Advancing through the regional required plenty of fortitude.
Tennessee defeated Longwood 5-0 Friday night, rallied in historic fashion Saturday afternoon to beat the University of South Carolina-Upstate 7-3, then
held off Longwood again, thanks largely to Meghan Gregg and Matty Moss.
Gregg, a national player of the year finalist, drove in two runs Sunday, and Moss, a sophomore, pitched her 13th complete game of the year.
“I felt really good at the plate this weekend,” said Gregg, a junior shortstop who homered in all three regional wins. “Having teammates also getting hits gives me more confidence. We had 12 hits today, and that’s a lot.”
Brooke Vines drove in Jenna Holcomb with a single in the seventh inning to give the Vols extra cushion against Longwood (30-29), which reached Sunday’s final round with Saturday wins against Ohio State and USC-Upstate.
Moss threw 39 first-pitch strikes to the 50 Longwood batters she faced in complete games against the Big South Conference champions Friday and Sunday. She combined with freshman Caylan Arnold to allow one earned run over the weekend, demonstrating the strides the young pitching duo has made even since a disappointing early exit from the Southeastern Conference tournament this month in Knoxville.
“After the Texas A&M series (in the regular season) and after the SEC tournament, we really had to look ourselves in the mirror and figure out what it was we needed to improve on,” Moss said. “This past week we have put in so much work, and we have really held ourselves accountable to hitting our spots. We’ve been expecting close to perfection from ourselves.”
The Vols won two of three at Texas A&M to close the regular season, with the teams combining for 32 runs in the series.
Earning the program’s eighth Women’s College World Series appearance will require surviving what Ralph Weekly predicted will be “a heck of a super regional,” but Tennessee has never missed the WCWS when seeded among the top eight teams.
“Everything we do, we’re expected to win,” Gregg said. “We won this regional, we celebrated for a couple minutes on the field. But now we’re ready for supers. We’re not taking no for an answer. I wouldn’t say we’re going to look at other years to compare to, because this is our team and this team will never be the same after this year.
“So we’re taking it that way and are going to hit the ground running this upcoming weekend.”