The Tennessee Volunteers went 25 consecutive baseball seasons without winning 20 Southeastern Conference games in a single spring.
They've now reached that challenging milestone three times in the past four years, with the top-ranked Vols attaining the feat with Thursday night's 9-3 pummelling of No. 24 South Carolina inside Lindsey Nelson Stadium. Tennessee improved to 44-10 overall and to 20-8 in SEC play, while the Gamecocks fell to 33-19 and 13-15.
"I think it's nice that this group is flexible," Vols coach Tony Vitello said during a news conference afterward. "A couple of years ago and even the year before, we had guys slated in very specific spots, whether on the mound or in the lineup. I don't know that we'll get to that spot this year to where it's just stationary."
Well, other than Christian Moore at the leadoff spot.
The junior second baseman, who was a member of Baylor School's 2019 TSSAA Division II-AA state championship team as a prep sophomore, went 3-for-4 Thursday with two home runs and a single off the top of the right-field wall. His two homers give him 26 for the season and 53 for his career, which are both program records.
"I don't really know what I'm feeling up there," Moore said. "I just know I worked really hard this offseason, and I'm just glad to see it coming out. I know going into every at-bat, at least in my mind, that I'm the better player."
South Carolina grabbed a 1-0 lead on Ethan Petry's one-out home run to left field in the first inning, but Moore tied the game with a leadoff homer to center and put the Vols up 2-1 with another homer to center in the third. Following Moore's second blast, Dylan Dreiling and Hunter Ensley drew two-out walks before Kavares Tears connected on a three-run homer to left to extend Tennessee's advantage to 5-1.
"I was really just wanting to hit the fastball right back at him," Tears said.
Blake Burke's double to left-center in the fourth scored Cal Stark to make it 6-1, and Dreiling's to run homer to right-center in the seventh provided the Vols their largest lead at 9-2.
Chris Stamos pitched the first two innings for Tennessee before being replaced by AJ Causey, who worked into the eighth inning and allowed two runs on six hits. Causey won for the 10th time this season against three defeats.
"AJ never really got in like a flow or a rhythm like he does at times," Vitello said, "but he also never got into that situation where things snowballed on him. Overall, it was an outing where he kept everything together for us."
The Vols and Gamecocks play again at 6:30 p.m. Friday, with the game available on the SEC Network+ streaming option.
Lady Vols in NCAA tournament
Tennessee's softball team, which was eliminated in the SEC tournament quarterfinals on May 9 by LSU, will begin its quest for a repeat trip to the Women's College World Series on Friday when the Lady Vols face Dayton in the Knoxville Regional.
The Lady Vols (40-10) are the third overall seed in the 64-team NCAA tournament field and will face Dayton (33-19) at 2:30 p.m., which will follow the regional's opening matchup between Miami of Ohio (48-7) and Virginia (32-18) at noon. The winner of the double-elimination event at Sherri Parker Lee Stadium will be among the final 16 teams standing for next week's super regionals.
Dayton raced through the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament, outscoring Massachusetts, Loyola Chicago and Saint Louis by the combined score of 18-3. The Flyers played just one SEC team during their regular season, falling 4-3 at Kentucky on March 26.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.