Tennessee overcomes early deficit, outlasts Oklahoma to secure series win
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Tennessee checked a couple boxes on Saturday afternoon with its 9-4 weather-delayed victory over Oklahoma in a weekend series being played in Oklahoma City.
The 24th-ranked Volunteers not only locked down an SEC series victory to wrap up the regular season, they also built some momentum for next week’s SEC Tournament. After outlasting the 20th-ranked Sooners, 9-7, in the series opener on Thursday, things got a little complicated on Friday at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark.
With Tennessee a mere 8 outs away from sealing the series win on Friday, Mother Nature instead took over and made the Vols wait another day to possibly nail down the SEC tourney tuneup. Friday’s game was suspended in the seventh inning because of inclement weather, with Tennessee leading Oklahoma, 5-3.
There was 1 out in the bottom of the seventh inning when lightning forced the game to be stopped, with the Volunteers being the visiting team this weekend despite the series not taking place in Norman. It’s still a road series in the state of Oklahoma, and so the teams were forced to come back on Saturday to resume the suspended game at 2 p.m. ET.
Tennessee picked up where it left off on Saturday, adding 2 runs each in the eighth and ninth innings to cruise to the 5-run win, improving to 37-18 overall and 15-14 in the SEC. Meanwhile, Oklahoma dropped to 31-20 overall and 13-16 in conference play, with 1 more chance later Saturday to avoid a sweep. The series finale was scheduled to begin approximately 45 minutes after the conclusion of Game 2.
But regardless of what happened later Saturday, Tennessee had already secured its first back-to-back SEC series victories of the season with the weather-delayed win.
Before the bad weather interrupted play on Friday, it was a freshman who gave the Vols a lead they would never relinquish, either Friday or Saturday. With Tennessee already having plated 2 runs in the top of the third to cut a 3-0, first-inning deficit to 3-2, freshman Trent Grindlinger lined a 3-2 pitch to right field to plate 2 runs and give the Volunteers a 4-3 lead.
Grindlinger’s clutch hit came with 2 outs, and he went 2 for 5 with 3 RBI over the 2-day victory.
Tennessee never looked back in those late innings when play resumed on Saturday, registering 3 straight 2-out hits to take a 5-run lead in the top of the ninth. Grindlinger added an RBI single up the middle that scored Henry Ford, who had belted a double off the wall in right-center field.
Reese Chapman plated Grindlinger with a double of his own to make it 9-4 and put the finishing touches on the 2-day affair, with 1 more game in the series still to come later Saturday afternoon.
Tennessee and Oklahoma will both be battling in next week’s SEC Tournament, but they’ll also be trying to push their way to Omaha next month for a spot in the College World Series. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the elite teams in the mix to be playing for everything in June:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
