Tennessee vs. LSU: Weekend schedule

We’ve got quite the weekend of baseball coming up, starting on Thursday night. The 9th ranked Tennessee Volunteers will head south to face the top-ranked LSU Tigers in a three-game showdown.

Tennessee, now 20-6 overall, bounced back with a sweep of Texas A&M last weekend. They turned around and beat UNC Asheville on Tuesday night, 5-0.

LSU is 22-3 overall and 4-2 in SEC play to this point. Head coach Jay Johnson has assembled the best roster in college baseball this season, with the Tigers landing at No. 1 in the preseason polls. They’ve held that status throughout the season.

LSU took two of three against No. 6 Arkansas last weekend.

The Tigers rank second in the country in batting average, hitting .339 to this point. They rank sixth overall in team ERA, trailing Tennessee, who ranks third. LSU is led by Dylan Crews, who is hitting a ridiculous .542. For reference, the season NCAA record is .551.

“You got the core group of guys that have been there for awhile,” Tony Vitello said of LSU. “You gotta be careful about being a fan of other guys when you’re competing against them, but it’s cool to watch some of the guys that are in the league when they’re young and then see them keep getting better and better. And they had some guys that were freshmen paying for them a couple years ago, here, that were already really good, and obviously they’re better now.”

Weekend Schedule

Game 1 – Thursday, March 30 (8 p.m. ET) [ESPNU]

RHP Chase Dollander (4-2, 3.93 ERA) vs. RHP Paul Skenes (5-0, 0.59 ERA)

Game 2 – Friday, March 31 (7 p.m. ET) [SEC Network]

RHP Chase Burns (2-1, 4.15 ERA) vs. RHP Ty Floyd (4-0, 2.05 ERA)

Game 3 – Saturday, April 1 (2 p.m. ET) [SEC Network+]

RHP Drew Beam (3-1, 2.54 ERA) vs. RHP Thatcher Hurd (2-0, 3.91 ERA)