LEXINGTON ? Tennessee junior Luke Hochevar worked seven shutout innings and struck out 10 to lead No. 30 Tennessee to a 18-2 victory over Kentucky on Friday night at Cliff Hagan Stadium.

The Wildcats fall to 15-13 on the year and 0-9 in the Southeastern Conference. Tennessee won its fourth straight to improve to 22-8 and 6-3 in the league. The series continues Saturday at 6:30 p.m. before wrapping up Sunday at 2 p.m. Saturday?s game can be heard on the WXRA 1580-AM in the Lexington area as well as online at the official website for Kentucky athletics, www.ukathletics.com.

Hochevar, the nation?s No. 2 ranked professional prospect according to Baseball America, won for the eighth straight start to improve to 8-1. He allowed five hits and recorded his third 10-strikeout game of the season.

The Vols gave Hochevar a 2-0 lead before he ever stepped on the mound by taking advantage of a pair of Kentucky errors in the first inning. With one out, Eric King singled and Eli Iorg reached on a catcher?s interference before both advanced on an errant pick off attempt.

Chase Headley knocked the first of his five base hits on the day to bring both runners home. Headley added a solo home run in the third as well as singles in the fifth, sixth and eighth innings before being retired for the first time in the ninth.

Headley?s homer was the second of back-to-back shots by him and Iorg. Two batters later, Kelly Edmundson added a third in the inning, all off Kentucky starter Andrew Albers.

Already leading 6-0, Tennessee put the game out of reach in the fifth by sending 15 batters to the plate and scoring seven runs. The rally started with a single, double and sacrifice fly. Michael Rivera and Julio Borbon sandwiched RBI singles around Alex Suarez getting hit by a pitch to make it 10-0 before Josh Alley?s two-run double. Iorg and J.P. Arencibia capped the scoring with two-out RBI singles.

Alley?s double chased Albers who took his third straight loss to fall to 3-3. His final line was 12 runs on 12 hits while walking none and striking out one in 4 1/3 innings. Matt Robinson entered and gave up one run in the fifth before setting down.

Tennessee finally got to Robinson in the ninth and tacked on five more runs. Robinson, making only his fifth appearance, previously had a season-long outing of 2 1/3 innings. It took the Vols more than three innings to finally solve him.

Kentucky tallied single runs in the eighth and ninth off two different relievers to avoid the shutout. In the eighth, J.B. Schmidt was hit by a pitch to lead off and came around to score on Antone DeJesus? single to center.

An inning later, Ryan Wilkes worked a leadoff walk and went to second on Michael Bertram?s single. J.P. Lowen plated him with a single to right field.

Kentucky finished the game with eight hits, three coming in the final two innings. Bertram and DeJesus led the way with two hits each.

Tennessee 18, Kentucky 2
April 8, 2005
at Lexington, Ky.
Tennessee – 204 070 005 – 18 26 1 (22-8, 6-3 SEC)
Kentucky – 000 000 011 – 2 8 4 (15-13, 0-9 SEC)
Pitchers: Tennessee – Hochevar; Hardin(8); Howell(9). Kentucky – A. Albers; M. Robinson(5).
Win-Hochevar (8-1) Loss-A. Albers (3-3) T-3:09 A-584
HR UT – Fitzgerald (1); Iorg (9); Headley (7); Edmundson (5); Borbon (3).