BATON ROUGE, La. — Marcus Phillips impatiently waited his turn.
His Tennessee baseball teammates lined the railing of the third-base dugout at LSU’s Alex Box Stadium. The first four hitters in the Vols’ lineup went to the plate in the first inning.
Phillips paced at the back of the dugout all the while, raring to get the ball and begin his start against the Tigers.
“He put a stake in the ground or whatever you want to say and said, ‘Follow me,’ ” Vols coach Tony Vitello said. “He wasn’t going to let his teammates down.”
Phillips started the most important game of Tennessee’s season. The junior met the moment with excellence, no-hitting the No. 5 Tigers for four innings and pitching the No. 6 Vols to a convincing 9-3 win on April 26.
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“He had all the confidence in the world tonight, which I love,” catcher Cannon Peebles said. “To keep it short, that is the Marcus that I know.”
Phillips allowed two runs on three hits and four walks in 6⅔ innings. He struck out six and threw a career-high 100 pitches in a pivotal game a day after Tennessee (35-8, 13-7 SEC) blew a three-run, ninth-inning lead in a 6-3 loss to the LSU (35-9, 13-7).
The game needed a response, and Phillips stood ready to handle it. His motive is to do anything he can to win. It didn’t change Saturday — it was just bigger.
“It is just a hostile environment and we are on the road,” Phillips said. “Backs up against the wall a little bit as far as we’ve got to tie up the series.”
Phillips (3-3, 2.93 ERA) was exquisite for four innings. He pitched through a two-on, one-out pinch in the fifth by getting a fly out and pouncing to field a bunt to end the inning. He allowed back-to-back homers on three pitches in the seventh but didn’t crumble.
He ended his outing with a strikeout and a foul pop out.
“I am really proud of him,” shortstop Ariel Antigua said. “Me and him talked a lot last year. We were going through some mental things. Feeling like we might not belong out here.”
That is what Vitello is talking about when he says that Phillips was “just a kid” last year when he came to Tennessee following a season at Iowa Western Community College.
Vitello says Phillips is a man now. He is professional in his approach. He is warm in his adoration for his teammates, which energized him to deliver for them.
He pumped a 100 mph fastball past LSU freshman Derek Curiel in the third inning. He tossed all of his pitches effectively. He established Tennessee’s attitude, and his teammates followed.
“I took last night a little personal and kind of how that outcome was and how (the Tigers) were,” Phillips said.
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Antigua, who is Phillips’ roommate, believes Phillips simply had to realize how scary he can be on the mound to understand he belongs. Phillips seemed to take hold of that reality in a powerful final preseason stretch that earned him the Saturday starter role.
He is clearly capable of overpowering a lineup and is unquestionably an SEC starter. He has demonstrated that for the past two months as he gives Tennessee what it desires in a starting pitcher a year after he wasn’t a candidate for SEC innings.
“He is ready to go no matter what,” Antigua said. “He wants to get that ball and get on that mound and compete. I just feel like he has a little more fire under him. He is ready to go and get the job done.”
Phillips finally paced from the dugout to the mound Saturday and did precisely that.
