It’s the safest assumption in sports today: The Tennessee Volunteers are a better college baseball team than the Iona Gaels.
Tennessee proved that over and over again this weekend at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, cruising to 27-1 and 29-0 victories Friday night and Saturday afternoon before finishing things off Sunday afternoon with a 12-2 trouncing in which the mercy rule was implemented after seven innings. Both the 29-0 triumph and the three-game aggregate of 68-3 established new program records for victory margins.
“More than anything, it was fun to watch the guys cheer one another on,” Vols coach Tony Vitello told reporters Sunday afternoon. “It’s never going to be a perfect weekend, but there was a lot of good stuff.”
The No. 15 Vols improved to 7-0 and have outscored opponents 117-7, having swept Georgia Southern by a combined 33-3 on the season’s opening weekend and following that with a 16-1 downing of UNC Asheville last Wednesday.
Tennessee began its trampling of Iona on Friday with third baseman Trey Lipscomb hitting for the cycle, becoming just the fourth player in Vols history to turn that trick and the first since 2016. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound senior from Fredrick, Maryland, was a double shy of the cycle Saturday when he was pulled after the fourth inning with the Vols up 10-0.