Drew Beam Leads The Way For Vols (UT Athletics)
No. 4/4 Tennessee recorded its seventh straight victory against LSU in Knoxville with a hard-fought 3-1 win on Saturday in front of a record crowd of 6,155 at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
Junior pitcher Drew Beam gave the Vols another quality start and earned the win to improve to 5-1 on the year. The junior righthander had five strikeouts and scattered eight hits but was able to work out of trouble on numerous occasions, giving up just one unearned run in 6.2 innings of work.
With runners on second and third with no outs and the Tigers having already plated a run to take a 1-0 lead in the second inning, Beam buckled down and struck out the next two batters before getting a groundout to escape the jam and limit the damage, giving the Big Orange some important momentum.
LSU starter Luke Holman put forth a great performance of his own, carrying a no-hitter into the sixth inning before a one-out single by Blake Burke started a rally for the Vols.
Billy Amick followed with a double to left field to put two runners in scoring position before Dylan Dreiling came through with the biggest hit of the night, a two-run single into right-center field on the first pitch he saw from reliever Griffin Herring, to put UT ahead 2-1.
Holman was stuck with the loss despite allowing just two hits in 5.2 innings of work, falling to 6-2 on the year.
Tennessee (29-6, 9-5 SEC) added an extra insurance run in the bottom of the eighth on an Amick opposite field home run off the videoboard, his second long ball of the weekend.
Nate Snead locked down the win with his third save of the year, tossing two shutout frames to cap the night, striking out three and allowing just one hit while lighting up the radar gun.
The Tigers (22-14, 3-11 SEC) outhit the Vols, 9-5, but were limited to just one extra-base hit, a leadoff double by Michael Braswell III in the second inning.
STAT OF THE GAME: Saturday's attendance of 6,155 was the first in program history over 6,000. Tennessee's single-game attendance record of 5,086 coming into this season has already been broken 13 times this year.
UP NEXT: The Vols will play for their first SEC series sweep of the season on Sunday afternoon. First pitch for the series finale is slated for 3 p.m. on the SEC Network.