Reaction to Hunter Ensley's performance against Vanderbilt baseball in series opener
Reaction to Hunter Ensley's performance against Vanderbilt baseball in series opener
Hunter Ensley started in center field and was third in Tennessee's lineup on Friday to open a three-game series against No. 10 Vanderbilt (34-16, 14-11 SEC). No. 12 Tennessee (39-11, 15-10 SEC) defeated the Commodores, 3-2, at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
Rankings reflect the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll.
Ensley went 2-for-4 on Friday, including one double, and scored one run. He scored a run in the sixth inning, sliding to home plate. In the seventh inning, Colin Barczi hit a fly ball to center field and Ensley jumped at the wall to prevent a base hit.
Following Ensley's performance in the series opener for Tennessee against Vanderbilt, Vols Wire looks at social media reaction and is listed below.
Saturday's game No. 2 is scheduled for 5 p.m. EDT, while first pitch for Sunday's series finale will take place at 3 p.m. EDT. Both contests will be televised by ESPN2.
Hunter Ensley's catch at the wall
Hunter Ensley's slide at home plate
Andrew Fischer
Ron Slay
Hunter Ensley at bat
Hunter Ensley's slide against Vanderbilt
Follow Vols Wire on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Paul Finebaum names national championship favorite
Paul Finebaum names national championship favorite SEC college football analyst Paul Finebaum has a clear favorite for the national championship. In an interview with Mike Greenberg on ESPN's show "Get Up", Finebaum agreed that the Texas Longhorns should be the favorites to win the 2025-26 national championship. The first reason Finebaum laid out was the Longhorns' burgeoning junior quarterback. "They have Arch Manning," said Finebaum. "He's expected to be better than Quinn Ewers, and if he'd come in in the Cotton Bowl vs. Ohio State, they may have won that game." Georgia was close to landing Arch Manning, but unfortunately, they lost out to Texas at the very end. Now, Georgia will potentially have to face Arch Manning twice in 2025. The Bulldogs host Texas in Athens, Georgia, this November. The teams could meet again in the SEC championship. Finebaum also cited the transfer portal acquisitions and the easy schedule. "They reloaded in the portal to the tune of many millions of dollars, and I think Texas, other than having to go to Ohio State Week 1, Texas is in good shape," Finebaum continued. Texas had the nation's No. 1 recruiting class and No. 25 transfer class. The Longhorns rebuilt their defensive line through the transfer portal, landing Maraad Watson, Travis Shaw, and Cole Brevard. However, the Longhorns have yet to beat Georgia while in the SEC. Georgia handed Texas two of its three losses in the 2024-25 season, including the SEC championship. The two teams will square off in Week 12 for what could be a de facto SEC championship.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Josh Pate isn't sleeping on Oklahoma's John Mateer
Josh Pate isn't sleeping on Oklahoma's John Mateer The Oklahoma Sooners made a major upgrade at starting quarterback this winter. With former starter Jackson Arnold off to play for the Auburn Tigers, OU had a hole to fill under center. Not only did they fill it, they did so with a player, John Mateer, who is better than any QB the Sooners had on the roster a year ago. In fact, Mateer was the transfer portal's top overall player this year. Oklahoma beat out Miami and North Carolina to land the former Washington State star. After OU was atrocious offensively in 2024, Mateer's arrival gives the Sooners a chance to rebound back to their winning ways in 2025. At least that's what Josh Pate, the host of "Josh Pate's College Football Show", thinks. Because of familiarity with his play-caller and the help of players from multiple top-ten recruiting classes over the past few years, he has Mateer right alongside the best quarterbacks in the entire SEC. "I'm putting John Mateer in the top five," Pate said. "If I'm right, Oklahoma's gonna be a contender in the SEC. I believe in the OC-quarterback approach, bringing both of them in, not just one of them, especially when they're both qualified, and Ben Arbuckle and John Mateer are. I also think it greatly helps that John Mateer is not being brought into Norman, Oklahoma, and then being looked at by everyone down on their knees with their hands clasped praying, 'Please save us John, save us.' No, you don't need to save anyone. You need to go in there and play solid football and execute, make good decisions, because you know what you've got around you? You've got a top-ten roster around you. You've got a really good defense. You don't have to score 42 a game to win, and you've got guys calling plays for you that you're very familiar with. I think he's gonna be really good this year. That's why I've got Oklahoma top ten in the preseason." Sooner Nation has long clamored for complementary football in Norman. For years, OU fans had to watch incredible offenses, led by Heisman Trophy-level quarterbacks, be ultimately let down by bad defenses. The trio of Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts combined for four College Football Playoff appearances in five seasons from 2015 to 2019, and it was the inability to get stops on defense that, for the most part, sunk those excellent Oklahoma teams in the semifinal round each time. When Brent Venables took over for Lincoln Riley, the hope was that he could change that. In the years since, Venables has built up a defense that looks like it can compete in the SEC. But, just as the defense was getting really good in 2024, Oklahoma's offense fell off a cliff with Seth Littrell and Jackson Arnold at the helm. Complementary football eluded OU yet again. With plenty of returning starters, the Oklahoma defense looks like it has the pieces to be good again. On the other side of the ball, the Arbuckle-Mateer combination hopes to finally bring high-level play on both offense and defense, at the same time, to Norman in 2025. Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on X, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Aaron on X @Aaron_Gelvin.
Associated Press
2 hours ago
- Associated Press
Nashville grows from 'not a soccer city' to hosting Club World Cup matches
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Soccer enthusiasts in Music City once numbered so few that when a fan spotted someone with a soccer bumper sticker, they could probably recognize the car's driver. Now? Don't wave. Odds are it's a stranger. Soccer has grown by leaps and bounds from the immigrants who played at a park decades ago through semi-pro to teams drawing only a couple hundred diehard fans eager to watch. That thirst for soccer helped Nashville go from an outside chance at a Major League Soccer expansion franchise to taking the pitch February 2020 before the biggest crowd to see a match in the state of Tennessee. Now, Nashville SC will be hosting Club World Cup games at its GEODIS Park in June. Ian Ayre, hired in May 2018 as Nashville SC's first CEO and now vice chairman of the MLS team, got a quick dose of skepticism about soccer on his cab ride from the airport to his hotel on his first day in town. 'The driver heard my accent and he's like, what are you doing here? I said, 'Oh, I've come here to build a soccer team,' and he started laughing. And he said, 'This isn't a soccer city.' Like that's not going to work here. Like you may as well kind of go home sort of thing. And little by little, we chipped away.' Now Nashville has the largest soccer-specific venue in the U.S. The 30,000-seat venue has hosted a Leagues Cup Final with Messi booed by local fans in 2023, and Aston Villa of the Premier League visits in August. Ayre said FIFA President Gianni Infantino had only compliments for what Nashville has created. 'He said to me, 'I think it's incredible not only that you guys built this, but it feels like a truly authentic soccer experience,'' Ayre said. Nashville's soccer pioneers In the 1970s, Jose Fernandez and Fred Eckhardt helped build six soccer fields south of Nashville. Otey Smithson, now a board member of U.S. Adult Soccer, vice president of the Tennessee State Soccer Association's adult programs and a high school boys' soccer coach, grew up playing for Fernandez. 'They started the transformation of soccer in Tennessee,' Smithson said. Steve Klein also played on Fernandez's fields before high school, where the soccer team often drew more fans than the football team. After college, he played for the Nashville Metros in 1998 with crowds reaching up to 2,000 for games. Klein remembers the team's owner trying to get Nashville's help building a stadium that never came for the Metros. 'His vision was a little bit earlier than what the city wanted maybe, because obviously now they've got things really rolling,' said Klein, now director of coaching and MLS Next for Pennsylvania Classics. MLS was interested in Nashville in 1999, and Devinder Sandhu asked billionaire John Ingram to invest the $3 million franchise fee. Now the principal owner of Nashville SC, Ingram's group paid $150 million for the Nashville franchise granted in December 2017. Sandhu, who played club soccer at Vanderbilt in the 1970s, helped start local youth programs, the Blues in 1978 and the Metros in 1989. The roster had players like three-time MLS Cup winner Richard Mulrooney and MLS goalkeeper Eddie Carvacho. 'It's a rocket ship that had been sitting on the launching pad for 70 years,' Sandhu said of the sport's explosive growth in Nashville. Soccer boom The roots kept growing in 1976 when the Tennessee State Soccer Association opened. High schools followed with sanctioned championships in 1986-87. When Hans Hobson was hired as a coach for the Olympic developmental team, practices were held at the Metros' field next to a prison. Hobson had to reassure parents it was safe to practice there. 'You were willing to take whatever,' Hobson said. 'We've kind of gotten kind of snobby now. ... 'Why are we playing on this field? It's ratty, it doesn't have enough grass.' When we were growing up, we'd take whatever we could get.' Now the executive director of the state soccer association, Hobson says Tennessee had approximately 35,000 registered players when he was hired about 14 years ago. Now? That's the number for the Nashville area alone, not counting independent groups or adults. National team impact USA Soccer also helped with the U.S. women first playing in Nashville at Nissan Stadium, home to the NFL's Tennessee Titans, in 2004. They are 5-0-1 all-time in Nashville with their latest game here in February 2023 at GEODIS Park. The U.S. men's national team didn't play in Nashville until 2009 and are 5-2-2 all-time. Rain led fans to stand for that 2009 game featuring a then-19-year-old Jozy Altidore and again through a 2011 match. Clay Trainum, founder of the Nashville Soccer Archives, worked as a press officer for the U.S. team for the 2011 match against Paraguay. He said fans standing alerted people nationally to the local interest in soccer. 'I think that that kind of queued off, whether subconsciously in folks' heads, 'If we can do this right, we can find a community that will support this team,'' Trainum said. National connections Cindy Parlow Cone, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, is a native of Memphis claimed by Nashville soccer folks as one of their own. Mulrooney coaches the Memphis men's soccer team, while Stanford coach Jeremy Gunn played for the Metros in 1998. Klein coached U.S. national team star Christian Pulisic both with the Pennsylvania Classics and the U.S. youth national team. 'The tentacles have grown so much, and it's amazing to see where it started,' Smithson said. Southern-style approach Tailgating is key piece of American-style football in the South, and that's become a tradition for Nashville SC and the Backline featuring seven different supporters' groups now. Stephen Robinson, president of the Roadies' group between 2020 and 2023, recalls getting permission to tailgate with a friend in the parking lot at Vanderbilt University for Nashville SC games. Now he commutes to Nashville from Washington D.C. for games with people he considers family. 'There's way more than two people nowadays, but you get that sense of just being a part of something,' Robinson said. They do more than just party before matches and chant and sing through games. The Roadies, a non-profit group, help fund local youth soccer through Soccer for the Nations in an outreach started when one of their founders, Kyle Mountsier, took soccer balls to Haiti in 2014. 'We're the dumb idiots that want to make a city better,' said Newton Dominey, a Roadies founder and original president in 2014. Southern company Nashville is hardly alone among Southern locales embracing soccer culture. In North Carolina, the North Carolina Courage in the National Women's Soccer League has an enthusiastic fan base. Charlotte FC, which joined Major League Soccer in 2022, averaged 33,383 fans per game last year. The Southern love of soccer extends beyond the pro teams. The University of North Carolina women's soccer team has won a staggering 23 national championships and regularly ranks in the top 10 in average home attendance. What's next Nashville missed out on the 2026 World Cup with the Titans building an enclosed stadium, taking the only venue big enough to host Cup matches off the market. That opens in 2027, and yes, Nashville wants the 2031 Women's World Cup with Ayre helping recruit future events. Add to that a NWSL team to the list. Ron Deal, among the founders of the Nashville Roadies' supporters group, is among those confident that is coming: 'We will have a professional women's soccer team. ... I'm disappointed it hasn't happened yet.' ___ AP Soccer Writer Anne M. Peterson contributed. ___ AP soccer:
