Ka’ai Tom knew he would have to deliver for the Wildcats to have the kind of season they wanted to have.He did on Saturday.”Obviously he was impactful today,” UK head coach Gary Henderson said. “Clearly.”With Tom anchoring the lineup in the No. 3 spot, Kentucky baseball completed a sweep of rival Tennessee for the first time in Cliff Hagan Stadium history. The Cats won 5-3, due in large part to Tom’s big afternoon. The junior right fielder had three hits in four at-bats, driving in three runs. “It does help us get back on track in the conference,” Tom said. “We lost a lot of close games and it’s good to finally pull one off.”Tom got the scoring started for UK (22-16, 8-9 Southeastern Conference) in the bottom of the first inning. With one out, he followed up an Evan White double with one of his own to stake the Cats to a 1-0 lead. Two innings later, Tom was in the middle of a rally to retake the lead in the third inning, but he would save his biggest blow for later.The game seemed destined for a tight finish before Tom stepped to the plate in the fifth inning with Kyle Barrett standing on third base. Needing a fly ball to send Barrett home with one out, Tom came up with just that. His fly ball, however, landed well into the parking lot past the right-field fence for his third homerun of the season.”That was probably most clean I’ve ever caught the ball,” Tom said.For the season, Tom is batting a team-best .377 with 42 runs batted in, though he fell short of his second cycle of the season when he flew out to center in the seventh inning. The Kaneohe, Hawaii, native has had an uneven run through conference play, hitting just .257 entering Saturday’s season finale against the Volunteers. That makes his performance all the more encouraging as UK enters the final month of the regular season.”He’s a real presence in the box,” Henderson said. “He’s a threat. He’s an all-league kid and everybody’s aware that he’s a really accomplished hitter. He’s a guy that if he doesn’t do well his first at-bat you can count on him to give you a solid at-bat in the box, a solid approach throughout the game.”JaVon Shelby would follow Tom’s two-run shot with another long ball for UK’s first back-to-back homers since 2012 and the Cats wouldn’t look back. Wildcat pitchers turned in another solid outing, with Andrew Nelson, Zach Logue, Zach Strecker, Logan Salow and Spencer Jack combining to allow just three runs on nine hits. The Vols’ biggest threats came in the final two innings. Tennessee loaded the bases with one out against Logue and Strecker in the eighth, but Salow entered and retired Chris Hall and Christin Stewart in order to preserve the final margin. In the ninth, Salow allowed runners to reach second and third. Jack entered and allowed both Vols to score, but got the save nonetheless.Over the course of the three-game sweep, UK yielded just four runs.”I think we’re way advanced in terms of clarity and plan from where we were six, seven weeks ago,” Henderson said. “Much more confident. Obviously the body language was pretty good all weekend on the mound. Our presence was good. We did a nice job pounding the zone early in the count.”Thanks to the stellar pitching and Tom’s big Saturday, the Cats climbed to within a game of .500 in SEC play. The season they were all hoping for is still within reach, especially since UK faces the three teams it trails in SEC East standings over the next four weeks.”We’re fortunate in who we’ve got left because we’ve got the people in front of us,” Henderson said. “So you get those people and then you can make up some room. It won’t be easy. I’m not pretending like it’s easy. But we’re pretty fortunate with who we’ve got in front of us and if we continue to get that type of starting pitching we’ll be in the ballgames.”Even more importantly than that, the Cats are trending the right way in the way they are playing the game.”We’re really taking some really positive steps forward where we have some real presence and some real body language that we didn’t have six, eight weeks ago,” Henderson said. “… I think it’s been really, really a positive thing.”