Lipscomb upsets No. 3 Vols, 9-6
The No. 3 Tennessee Volunteers entered Tuesday night’s game at Lindsey Nelson Stadium with an unbeaten record this season in midweek games. That’s no longer the case. Lipscomb leadoff hitter Alex Vergara went 3-for-4 with two home runs in a 9-6 upset triumph that snapped Tennessee’s six-game winning streak and left the Vols 11-1 in midweek games. The Vols slipped to 37-8 this season and to 30-3 at home.
“We had a couple of pitches where we were ahead in the count and didn’t execute,” Vols coach Tony Vitello said in a news conference, “and there were some guys who swung the bat well for them. We never had a big inning, and there was certainly a lot of bleeding that never got stopped.
“There was no one glaring issue.”
The Bison, who competed in the same Clemson Regional that Tennessee won in last year’s NCAA tournament, collected the brightest moment of their otherwise challenging 16-27 season.
Tennessee gave the early impression it would be an easy night when Blake Burke’s twoout double up the middle in the second inning scored Colby Backus and Dalton Bargo to put the Vols up 4-1. That, however, was when Vergara changed matters abruptly, as his home run to left field in the third inning made it 4-2 and his solo shot to center to lead off the fifth put the Bison up 5-4.
Vergara also made leaping catches in center field during Tennessee’s half of the fifth inning to take extra-base hits away from Billy Amick and Dyland Dreiling.
Lipscomb extended its lead to 7-4 in the sixth inning on solo homers to left by David Coppedge and Parks Bouck. The Bison racked up 11 hits and nine runs at the expense of Tennessee pitchers Dylan Loy, Marcus Phillips, Andrew Behnke, JJ Garcia and Matthew Dallas.
“This should be a painful experience,” Vitello said. “The food shouldn’t taste as good.”
The Vols return to action Thursday (7 p.m. on ESPN2), when they face Florida in Gainesville.