By Sawyer Hunley
The Lady Vols came into Saturday’s game against Missouri with a chance to clinch a double bye in the SEC Tournament.
The Lady Vols were riding high on momentum coming into Saturday’s game, having won four in a row and also having already picked up the series win over Missouri.
That momentum was shut off by the Tigers on Saturday as they took Game 3, 4-3.
“I don’t think we really followed the game plan today,” said head coach Karen Weekly postgame.
There is no doubt that the Lady Vols did not follow the game plan offensively as they were very unable to push runs across the plate.
It finally looked like the offense had turned the corner, as the struggling offense had recorded back-to-back games with ten hits.
Saturday was a completely different story, as they managed only four hits in the game.
Getting hits was not the only issue on Saturday, as the Lady Vols left five runners stranded on base in the game.
Tennessee had no players who recorded more than one hit in this game.
The bottom of the order for Tennessee was the worst part of this game, as they only combined for one hit and one hit by pitch in the game.
The bottom of the order has to pick up their production if Tennessee wants to have a successful postseason.
Without the bottom of the order, all of the pressure goes to the top to create all of the offense, and successful postseason teams can’t have that.
The pitching was yet again steady for the Lady Vols as Erin Nuwer got the start in the circle.
The New York product pitched three innings while giving up five hits, striking out four batters, and walking three batters.
It was not Nuwer’s best outing, but she was able to battle through multiple times with runners on base and get out of the inning unblemished.
Both Sage Mardjetko and Karlyn Pickens came in relief and had solid outings as they only gave up one earned run combined.
The major issue for the Lady Vols was errors; they had two on the day, costing them multiple runs.
The Lady Vols have been one of the best defensive teams this season, and this is definitely not a good time to change that as they start postseason play on Wednesday.
“We need to learn from this. It’s a flushing situation, but it’s not. It’s very different from our loss last weekend,” said Weekly.
Up Next: The Lady Vols are the No. 5 seed in the SEC Tournament as they are set to take on the winner of the game between the No. 12 seed South Carolina Gamecocks and No. 13 seed Ole Miss Rebels.
First pitch is slated for 5:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday with the game televised on SEC Network.