College baseball had a very exciting weekend with my upsets and many good games. The first weekend of baseball for the top 25 teams in the nation are usually pretty easy games or tournaments. That was not the case for Tennessee. 

Tennessee played in the MLB Desert Invitational with teams such as Grand Canyon University, the University of Arizona, Tennessee, Michigan State University, Fresno State University, and University of California San Diego. Tennessee ranked number 2 in the nation going into this weekend played 3 games, vs Arizona, Grand Canyon, and UC San Diego. 

Going into the season Tennessee was a big favorite to win the College World Series. That’s even after losing many top players in the MLB Draft. Tennessee started their season off against Arizona and took a 3-1 loss. Everyone thought that they were just getting their feel back after the long offseason. This was also not the case for Tennessee. 

They then took on Grand Canyon and the game got off to a hot start. Grand Canyon took an early lead in the first after a Jacob Wilson RBI triple. Jacob Wilson, a top 100 prospect going into this year’s draft, has looked good early this season. Chase Burns, the Tennessee starting pitcher, got into a grove with his fastball topping out at 100 MPH. 

Tennessee took the lead back after 4 innings with a Cal Stark 2 run homer to put the Volunteers on top. 

Tennessee would then score again on an RBI single from Christian Moore after a leadoff triple. Tennessee had an opportunity to blow the game open with the bases loaded and 2 outs but grounded out to Grand Canyon shortstop Jacob Wilson.  

Chase Burns would end up getting into some trouble in the bottom of the 6th and gave up a one out double. He would end up advancing on a wild pitch and end up scoring on a sacrifice fly to center field to make the score 3-2 for the Vols. 

The bottom of the 7th is when Grand Canyon started to heat up. The inning started with Jacob Wilson infield single and he advanced to second on a wild pitch. Elijah Burris would then lay down a sacrifice bunt and a wild throw by catcher Charlie Taylor led Grand Canyon to tie the game.

The bottom of the 8th started off with a walk and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt. Tennessee would get the second out and then a ground ball hit to short from Cade Verdusco was fielded by the shortstop and after a bad throw to first which let Eli Paton to score to give Grand Canyon the lead 4:3. 

Tennessee made very crucial mental mistakes in the last 3 innings of this game. Zane Denton tried to go first to third on a hard hit single to right field and was thrown out by 20 feet. That would be the end of the game as the Grand Canyon Antelopes

came out with the victory 4-3 over number 2 ranked Tennessee. Tennessee would get back to their winning things by their win over UC San Diego.