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Tennessee pitcher AJ Russell named All-American by NCBWA

IMG_3593by:Grant Ramey•06/14/23•

GrantRamey

Tennessee Baseball
Tennessee freshman pitcher AJ Russell (Tennessee Athletics)

Tennessee pitcher AJ Russell added more All-American honors on Wednesday, being named Third Team All-American by the National College Baseball Writers Association. Russell earlier this week was named a Freshman All-American by the NCBWA.

Russell is Tennessee baseball’s 55th All-American and one of just five true freshmen to do so with the Vols. It’s happened three times over the last two years, with Russell joining Chase Burns and Drew Beam, who were freshmen All-Americans in 2022.

Russell, the right-handed relief pitcher from Franklin, Tenn., leads all Tennessee pitchers (minimum 25 innings pitched) with a 0.94 ERA, a 0.56 WHIP and a .100 opponent batting average. He’s 2-0 this season and has 46 strikeouts against seven walks in 28.2 innings pitched.

He appeared in 22 games this season, recording multiple strikeouts. He has allowed only one run on five hits in 10 innings dog SEC play.

Tennessee on Saturday night will make its sixth appearance in the College World Series in Omaha. 

The Vols (43-20) will face LSU (48-15), the NCAA Tournament’s No. 5 overall seed, play the second game on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, following the 2 p.m. ET game between Wake Forest (52-10) and Stanford (44-18). 

The losers from Friday’s games will play Sunday at 2 p.m. ET and winners play at 7 p.m. ET. Losers from the two Saturday games will play Monday at 2 p.m. ET and the winners will match up Monday at 7 p.m. ET.

Tennessee swept through the Clemson Regional, beating Charlotte twice as well as No. 4-seed Clemson, then won the Hattiesburg Super Regional over Southern Miss in three games. The Vols lost 5-3 in Game 1, then answered with an 8-4 win in Game 2 and the Omaha-clinching 5-0 win late Monday night. 

Tennessee coach Tony Vitello took Tennessee to Omaha in 2021 after sweeping through the regional and super regional rounds in Knoxville, beating LSU at Lindsey Nelson Stadium to make their return to Omaha. The Vols were done after two games though, losing to Virginia and Texas to see their season come to an end. 

Tennessee was upset by Notre Dame as the No. 1 overall seed a year ago, losing in three games.

The Vols started this season by losing four of their first five SEC series, before bouncing back with four wins over their final five conference series. The run to Omaha came after going one-and-done in the SEC Tournament in Hoover, losing 3-0 to Texas A&M after getting only one hit.

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