BATON ROUGE, La. ? Kentucky hit a pair of three-run home runs and got a solid pitching effort from Aaron Tennyson and Brock Baber to even the series against LSU with a 7-1 victory on Saturday afternoon at Alex Box Stadium.
With the win, the Wildcats improve to 24-21 on the year and 6-16 in the Southeastern Conference. The 24 wins matches the team?s total from each of the past two years with 10 games still to play. LSU lost for just the second time in 10 conference games and fell to 32-16 overall and 13-9 in the league.
The rubber match of the series takes place Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. Freshman lefty Andrew Albers (4-4, 4.43) takes the hill for the Wildcats against fellow southpaw Greg Smith (7-2, 2.28). Albers leads Kentucky with six quality starts this year, including two in his last two outings. He has allowed only one run in his last 16 innings pitched. Meanwhile, Smith carries a 25 2/3 inning scoreless streak into the game. The game can be heard on WLXO 96.1-FM in the Lexington area and online at www.UKathletics.com.
?We?re going with the freshman tomorrow,? Cohen said. ?He has really pitched well the last two Sundays and we hope he can come out and do it again for us.?
Reigning SEC Player of the Week John Shelby got Kentucky started in the second when he singled and stole second. After a walk and a sacrifice bunt, the Wildcats had a pair of runners in scoring position for Ryan Wilkes with two outs. Wilkes bounced a sharp grounder to third which was mishandled by Chris Jackson for the first run of the game.
Senior J.B. Schmidt then came to the plate and launched the 1-1 offering from LSU starter Clay Dirks over the wall in left field for a 4-0 Kentucky lead. The ball bounced off a railing in the bleachers and back onto the playing field, initially looking like it would be an off-the-wall double.
?He threw me a fast ball inside and I put the good part of the bat on it and it went out,? Schmidt said. ?I didn?t even know it went out. I was running around the bases and the umpire never signaled, so I didn?t even get to trot on it.?
It was the first home run for Schimdt in his career, coming in his 225th career at bat. The three-run shot gave Schmidt a career-high three RBIs in the contest.
In the fourth, Dirks walked Schmidt to lead off the inning before hitting Antone DeJesus. Shaun Lehmann followed with a towering home run to left-center field to extend the lead to 7-0.
?Offensively, we take a great deal of pride in creating big innings with walks, hit by pitches and errors and we did a great job of that today,? Kentucky head coach John Cohen said.
It was more than enough for starter Aaron Tennyson, who worked five innings and allowed one run on seven hits. He walked one batter while earning the win to improve to 6-1 on the year. Kentucky improved to 5-0 in conference play when he starts. The only run he allowed came on Ryan Patterson?s RBI single in the fifth.
?We talked about how aggressive LSU is at the plate. I wanted to keep it down and make them put it in play,? Tennyson said. ?Our coaches like for our pitchers to come in and throw it in the strike zone and let the defense make the plays and they did that today.?
Brock Baber entered with one on and nobody out in the sixth and hurled the final four innings ? allowing just three hits — for his fifth save. The total is tied for sixth best in school single-season history.
Shelby registered three of Kentucky?s 10 hits on the afternoon and followed each with a stolen base. It was the third time this year he has swiped three bags in a game. With the performance, he reached 20 steals for the year, and became the fourth UK player since 1979 to have 10 home runs and 20 steals in a season.
