Not 'end of world' for Vols

LEXINGTON, Ky. - In what both teams see as a "must win" series, Kentucky overcame a 3-0 deficit to upend visiting Tennessee 6-4 in the opener of a three-game SEC baseball series Friday night.

With two more weekends of SEC play after this, Kentucky and Tennessee are on the outside looking in at the SEC tournament (May 20-24). Only the top eight teams qualify. Kentucky (23-22, 9-13 SEC) and Tennessee (20-26, 6-16) started the series ranked 10-11.

"We win the next two, we'll be tied with Kentucky and have the tie-breaker with them," said UT coach Todd Raleigh. "And certainly control our own fate with South Carolina and Vandy. So we've got to stay focused. It's not the end of the world."

Nick Hernandez (2-5) held Kentucky to two singles through five innings. But the Wildcats erupted for all six of their runs in the sixth.

Left-hander James Paxton (5-2) struck out 12 while holding Tennessee to four runs, six hits and two walks over eight innings. Braden Kapteyn pitched the ninth, fanning one and walking one, for his fourth save.

Andy Burns, Chris Bisson, Keenan Wiley and Kapteyn, who started the game as designated hitter, each had two of Kentucky's 10 hits.

The biggest hit of the night, though went to freshman left fielder Chad Wright.

His two-out, three-run double snapped a 3-3 tie and capped the six-run sixth.

"My teammates got on, put a little pressure on their pitchers and Coach was after me, telling me I need to hit to left field," Wright said. "So I was waiting, sitting back, and he (Hernandez) threw me a fastball outside, where I could drive it to left field."

Left-fielder P.J. Polk, sprinting towards the line, did well to get his glove on the ball.

"(Wright) got some strength behind it and some help from the (18 mph) wind, running it away from the kid," said Kentucky coach Gary Henderson. "Absolutely a key, key hit for us."

Wiley's two-run single started the sixth-inning scoring. Kapteyn added an RBI double.

Paxton yielded a first-inning RBI single to Polk and a two-run single in the fourth to Zach Osborne.

"We heard a lot of stuff all week about (Paxton), how good of a pitcher he was," said Osborne, a freshman shortstop out of Pleasure Ridge Park in Louisville. "He could run it up there and change speeds also. So I was just trying to look for that fastball and get something I could drive."

The Vols added a run in the seventh, but Paxton struck out the side in order in the eighth.

"That's kind of the theme for me: I start a little slow and I get stronger as I go," said Paxton, who threw 132 pitches. "I just get more comfortable and it just kind of starts rolling for me."

"That one inning hurt us," Raleigh said. "We just left some pitches up in the zone that inning and they got some hits. . . . Should have made some plays that we didn't. It's disappointing because I thought we played a pretty good game other than that."