Tennessee Baseball Is Headed Back To College World Series

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Tennessee Baseball celebrating their College World Series-clinching win. Photo: Courtesy of Tennessee Athletics

For the second time in three years, the Tennessee Volunteers are Omaha bound after taking out Southern Mississippi 5-0 in the winner-takes-all game three of the NCAA Hattiesburg Super Regional on Monday night (June 12) at Pete Taylor Park.

It was stellar pitching performances by sophomores Drew Beam and Chase Burns that led the way for the Vols as they posted their ninth shutout of the season, holding the Golden Eagles to seven hits, all of which were singles.

Beam got the start and was able to keep Southern Mississippi’s hitters off balance all night long by utilizing all of his pitches, tossing six scoreless innings with seven strikeouts. Beam ran into trouble in the seventh after allowing back-to-back seeing-eye singles to put runners on the corners with no outs before making way for the bullpen.

Burns pitched the final 2.2 innings to record his second save of the season. The hard-throwing right-hander did not allow a single hit and walked just one batter in his outing.

The trio of Griffin Merritt, Zane Denton and Maui Ahuna provided the offense for Tennessee, combining for three hits, three runs and five RBIs.

Denton provided the biggest hit of the evening, hammering a 2-0 pitch over the wall in right center field for a three-run homer in the bottom of the fifth to give Tennessee a 4-0 lead and some breathing room. The home run was Denton’s 16th of the season and fourth of the NCAA Tournament after hitting three in last weekend’s Clemson Regional.

With the victory, Tennessee won their fourth Super Regional in program history, including their third on the road.

The Vols (43-20) travel to Omaha for their sixth appearance in the Men’s College World Series, where they will open up with a marquee SEC matchup against No. 5 national seed LSU on Saturday night (June 17) at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN.

University of Tennessee, Knoxville is the only SEC program and one of just four in the nation to appear in at least two of the last three College World Series, joining Stanford (2021, 2022, 2023), Texas (2021 & 2022) and Virginia (2021 & 2023).

Steven Boero
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