The Tennessee Volunteers produced a couple of milestone moments Tuesday night during their expected 20-5 blistering of Bellarmine inside Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
Charlie Taylor's three-run home run to left field in the seventh inning gave the No. 4 Vols a 17-4 lead, and it allowed Tennessee to become the first team nationally to reach 100 homers for the season. The Vols hit six home runs against the Knights to bring their tally to 101, with Blake Burke collecting the team's 10th grand slam with his blast to right-center in the second inning.
Tennessee's record for grand slams in a single season before this spring was seven.
"It's a jovial deal," Tennessee coach Tony Vitello said. "The whole place went ballistic when Chuck did what he did. We were able to use a lot of guys the whole nine innings."
The Vols were able to employ eight pitchers in improving to 31-6 overall with their nation-leading 26th victory at home, while Bellarmine dropped to 6-30. Tennessee is now 4-0 all-time against the Knights by a combined score of 59-15, and the Vols are 10-0 in midweek games this season by a combined 121-24.
Of course, beating a team from Kentucky is not the same as beating Kentucky.
Tennessee will travel to Lexington this weekend to take on the No. 3 Wildcats — the Southeastern Conference owns the top four teams in this week's D1 Baseball poll, with Texas A&M and Arkansas holding down the top two spots. Kentucky is 31-5 overall, and its 14-1 league record is four games clear of Tennessee's 10-5 SEC clip.
"I'm very excited," redshirt sophomore center fielder Kavares Tears said. "We don't shy away from good competition, and Kentucky has been doing really good so far this season. They're on fire right now, but we're ready to go to Lexington and compete."
Tennessee set the tone Tuesday with a seven-run second inning that began with a Dean Curley walk and Reese Chapman's two-run home run to right field. The next three at-bats consisted of a Dalton Bargo walk, an Ariel Antigua double down the left-field line, and a Cannon Peebles walk to load the bases.
Burke then cleared those bases with his grand slam that put the Vols up 6-0, and they extended it to 7-0 on a Tears one-out homer to right-center.
The Knights had significant success in the third inning, getting a three-run homer by Will Aubel and a solo shot by Casey Sorg to pull within 7-4, but Tennessee would regroup. The Vols got a bases-loaded walk from Billy Amick in their half of the third to extend the advantage to 8-4, and Chapman homered to left in the fourth to make it 9-4.
Bargo hit a two-run single to left in the sixth for an 11-4 advantage.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.