April 19, 2003
The University of Kentucky baseball team secured its first Southeastern Conference series of the season, and the first in its last eight tries, with a 4-1 win over the Tennessee Volunteers Saturday night, April 19, at Cliff Hagan Stadium. The Cats win marked their fourth in SEC play, and second in a row, having beaten UT, 1-0, on Friday night in the series opener.
UK (16-21, 4-12 SEC) opened up the scoring column in the first inning. Jake Kungl singled in his first at bat, and a double from Mike Breyman scored Kungl for the Cats first run. A single from Caleb Stewart, who returned to the lineup as the designated hitter for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury on Sat., April 12, drove in Breyman to give the Cats an early 2-0 lead.
“This team is playing much more relaxed than it did early in the season,” UK Assistant Coach Jan Weisberg said. “Early on we were struggling to hold onto leads because we would get too tense. Now we’re playing relaxed and it really shows with a performance like tonight.”
Tennessee (22-16, 7-10 SEC) countered in the top of the third. After Brett Chappell led off the inning with a walk, Jordan Czarniecki got his second base hit of the game to advance Chappell to third. Michael Rivera followed with a sacrifice fly to center to cut the Cats lead to one at 2-1.
UK added a couple of insurance runs in the seventh when Aaron Edwards reached second base on an error by the UT third baseman and Joe Naill followed with a perfect bunt for a single. After Naill stole second, giving UK two runners in scoring position, Volunteer catcher Javi Herrera threw to third to check Edwards, but the throw went awry, getting away from Rivera and scoring both Kentucky base runners.
Tennessee missed a chance to go up early, as the Volunteers began the game with consecutive singles. With runners on second and third, UK hurler Heath Castle struck out Alex Suarez, and Brian Cleveland grounded out to third to end the threat.
Castle (4-3) earned his third straight conference win, throwing 6 1/3 innings, allowing just one earned run on eight hits. Kalen Gibson threw 1 2/3 strong innings in middle relief before Seth Stanley came on to nail down his second save of the year, facing the last four UT batters and recording the last three outs of the game for the win. Naill led the Cats at the plate, going 3-for-3 with three singles.
“Joe Naill was really big for us tonight, on both sides of the ball,” Weisberg said. “He did a great job of setting the table on offense and made some fantastic defensive plays to save a couple of runs.”
The Cats and Volunteers will meet in the series finale on Easter Sunday, at 2 p.m. EST.
– UK –
