Baseball falls to Vols at Super Regional

For the second consecutive year, Tech was swept out of the NCAA Super Regional at Russ Chandler Stadium. Tech fell in the series to Tennessee.

"Certainly we're disappointed in the outcome today, but give Tennessee a lot of credit," Head Coach Danny Hall said.

Tech got off on the wrong foot in the series, dropping the opening game 3-2.Tech took a 2-1 lead going into the top of the ninth, but was unable to hold on.

Despite the loss, Blake Wood had a dominating performance for the Jackets. Wood only gave up one hit to the second batter of the game that went just under the glove of third basemen Wes Hodges.

"I was trying to make my pitches and had a couple of hard hit balls that went right at people and made pitches when I had to," Wood said.

That hit later came around to score on a throwing error by Andy Hawranick on what would have been the third out of the inning as Wood struck out Eric King. The ball got away from Hawranick and was kicked toward the mound. A hurried throw sailed over Matt Wieters' head and into right field.

After talking to the umpires after the play, Hall stated the umpires thought that King kicked the ball inadvertently. Wood only gave up another hit through seven innings before handing the ball over to the closer, Wieters.

"I felt like we had the lead and that Matt [Wieters] would give us two good innings," Hall said. "He's a great pitcher and has been in that situation a lot for us this year."

Kelly Edmundson pinch-hit for Tennessee and led off the ninth inning with a single. After a sacrifice moved the runner over to second, Robert Fitzgerald sent a first pitch hanging breaking ball just over the right field wall to give Tennessee the lead.

"I was trying to get ahead early in the count and hung [the pitch] up a little bit," Wieters said. "He did what you're supposed to do to a hanger and hit it out. I thought it was gone, but I hoped maybe he'd hit the top of the wall and come back."

Hall had planned on starting Tim Gustafson in the second, make or break game of the series. However, Gustafson needed another day of rest after pitching seven innings on Monday, so Lee Hyde started.

"We needed somebody other than Gus to win a game for us to go to Omaha and we felt like Lee was the guy," Hall said.

Hyde got off to a shaky start on the mound and was never fully able to recover. Hyde hit three batters and walked one during the first two innings, but managed to escape both innings without giving up a run.

Hyde gave up four runs and left a runner on for Jordan Crews to inherit with two outs in the fourth inning.

"The third inning was big," Hall said. "We felt like we had a chance to get out of the inning. We had a bang-bang play at first that went against us, and then [Rivera] hit a three-run homer right behind it. Then we made an error and gave them two more runs to kind of blow the game open. But that was a pivotal part of the game because we could have got out of that inning with the score 1-0."

Crews managed to close up the inning, but not before allowing two more runs. Crews was not able to stop the bleeding in the third as six of the seven Tennessee batters reached base on a hit and three more runners scored in the fourth to give the Volunteers a 9-0 lead.

In the top of the fifth, Tech took advantage of Steven Blackwood being the only runner to be walked by the Vols. Blackwood stole second and was driven home by Mike Trapani, but the Jackets wouldn't threaten again until the eighth inning.

The Jackets put two more runs on the board in the eighth as Tennessee's James Adkins was tiring, but Tech was unable to get back within striking distance.

The Volunteers ended Tech's season with a 13-3 loss. Tennessee's Adkins pitched 7.2 innings allowing only a handful of hits and administering the lone walk to keep the Jackets at bay.

"We didn't have any answers for Adkins. He pitched very well," Hall said.