This weekend's Arkansas-Tennessee baseball series at Lindsey Nelson Stadium is not for the faint of heart.
Max Ferguson's three-run home run to right field Saturday with nobody out in the ninth inning catapulted the No. 4 Volunteers to an 8-7 triumph over No. 1 Arkansas before a jubilant crowd of 3,101. The Vols and Razorbacks lead their respective Southeastern Conference divisions with 18-8 league records, with the Hogs having won Friday night's opener 6-5 after surrendering five first-inning runs.
"These last two days have been staple SEC games," Tennessee coach Tony Vitello said on a Zoom call. "Call them inches if you want that separate the two teams, but that's what these kids have signed up for, and that's why (there are) more fans in our league than any other league. It's probably how it will go tomorrow, too.
"Our guys want to be in the category of being in the hunt for special things at the end of each year. To be in that category, you've got to play with the teams in our league that are always able to do that. We've played Florida, Arkansas and Vanderbilt, and the difference has been in inches."
Tennessee starting pitcher Will Heflin took a no-hitter and a 3-0 lead into the sixth inning, but Arkansas quickly tied the game. Braydon Webb's two-run homer in the sixth highlighted the three-RBI performance for the leadoff hitter of the Razorbacks, but his performance was topped by Ferguson, who went 3-for-5 with four RBIs.
Ferguson's homer was his ninth this season and surpassed Evan Russell's eighth-inning grand slam against Vanderbilt last month as the highlight of the year for the Vols (39-12).
"That was pretty crazy and is probably up there as far as one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of," Ferguson said of his moment afterward on a Zoom call. "When I turned to the dugout, the first person I saw was Coach V, and he was going bananas. It's always cool to do stuff like that."
Tennessee, which went 13 consecutive years without an NCAA tournament appearance from 2006-18, now has three wins over No. 1 teams under Vitello, a former Arkansas assistant. The Vols upset Florida in 2018 during Vitello's first season and beat Texas Tech last year before the coronavirus outbreak halted play.
The Vols and Hogs (38-10) will vie in the rubber match Sunday afternoon at 1, with the showdown available on SEC Network+ and the ESPN app.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.