Tennessee baseball’s track record against in-state foe Tennessee Tech hasn’t been the best oddly enough.

This time, the Vols handled business with a 7-1 win.

This marks two-straight wins in the series for Tennessee (27-2) after a poor stretch in both 2022 and 2023, the Vols dropped their matches with the Golden Eagles (17-10). This has now been made up for with wins in both the 2024 and current 2025 campaigns.

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Overall, the series sits in Tennessee’s favor by the mark of 74-32-1. The Vols are 48-13 at home with the 2022 loss being on a neutral field in Kodak, Tennessee.

This time, it was a trio of home runs that got the offense going for the Vols. They used swings from Blake Grimmer, Dean Curley and Chris Newstrom to push across six of their seven runs. The only other run to cross came on a series of wild pitches.

Getting the ball to start the Vols was AJ Russell. This was his second appearance of the year following one frame of work earlier in the season which featured him striking out the side.

This time, Russell allowed a hit and struck out two batters to register his second full inning of pitching this year. He threw 12 pitches with 11 going down as strikes.

Following Russell, it turned into another midweek bullpen game. Entering in relief the rest of the way were Michael Sharman, Austin Breedlove, Dylan Loy, Austin Hunley, Brandon Arvidson, Andrew Behnke, Thomas Crabtree, Ryan Combs, Brayden Sharp and Bryson Thacker.

Behnke was the only Tennessee pitcher to allow a run in his frame of work. He went 0.2 innings while allowing three hits and the run to cross.

As a pitching unit, the Vols gave up just eight hits and one run. This came on 13 strikeouts.

Russell got the ball to start but allowed his first hit of the season in the opening frame. He worked around this effectively, though, getting out of the inning with no real damage done.

In the bottom of the first, an error put Curley on base. This made way for Grimmer to tee off on a ball over the right-field wall for a two-run shot. This made it a 2-0 advantage after one inning of work.

After an inning of impressive defense, Tennessee’s bats got back to work. The Vols used an Ariel Antigua single and Curley home run to add another two on the board.

In the top of the third, Breedlove ran into some trouble. He loaded the bases with one out due to a double, single and hit-by-pitch. However, he got out of the jam with a pair of strikeouts.

Tennessee added another run after a Dalton Bargo single. Following getting on base, he went to second, third and home to score on three separate wild pitches. Antigua nearly pushed another across on a throwing error but the call on the field was overturned to end the inning.

In the fifth, Tennessee Tech got on the board. The Golden Eagles pushed across a run off Behnke but the damage was limited to just the single score. This made the game 5-1.

The Vols’ bats wouldn’t pick back up until the seventh. After three innings of silence on the scoreboard, Newstrom lifted a ball into the left field porches for a two-run shot. This gave Tennessee a 7-1 cushion with two innings to play.

This would be all the offense the Vols got as the bullpen continued to churn out outs resulting in a six-run win.

Tennessee will now host Texas A&M in a rematch of last season’s College World Series finals. While the Vols picked up where they finished a year ago, the Aggies sit at 1-8 in SEC play heading into the weekend.

The series will take place Friday through Sunday with pitch times of 7 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. and 3 p.m. in that order. Friday will be played on ESPNU, Saturday on SECN+ and Sunday on ESPN2.

Then, the Vols match up with Alabama A&M on Tuesday at home before taking to the road to play Ole Miss in Oxford the following weekend.