Texas A&M downs Tennessee at 2023 SEC Baseball Tournament behind dominant start from Troy Wansing

Texas A&M opened play at the 2023 SEC Baseball Tournament with a 3-0 win over Tennessee, using an excellent start on the mound by Troy Wansing to cruise to the victory.

Wansing threw eight innings and allowed just one hit in a game that was delayed just before the end by weather.

“I think it was kind of a combination of everything,” Wansing said on the SEC Network following the game. “I felt amazing, clearly kind of showed that.

“But just from the mental side, just being able to kind of like if I got behind in counts, knowing that I was going to get back in that count and knowing that if I just executed my pitch that they were going to get themselves out. I think I did that for most of the counts that I got behind in. Two pitches later they were groundouts, so that was big for me.”

Wansing credited his excellent outing with two things. One, his most recent outing out of the bullpen against Mississippi State. Two, some encouraging words from coach Jim Schlossnagle.

In that appearance against Mississippi State he threw 1.1 innings and did not allow a hit, striking out two of the four batters he faced.

“A lot of it was just building off what I did at Mississippi State on Saturday,” Wansing said. “I got the chance to close that game, went an inning and a third and was pretty efficient. But a lot of it boiled down to Schloss actually sat me down yesterday and was just like, ‘Hey, if you go out and do your thing you’re going to dominate these guys.’ That was all the confidence I needed and it showed.”

Schlossnagle even joked that he should have run Wansing out of the bullpen sooner.

With Texas A&M firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble, every win this week out in Hoover at the 2023 SEC Baseball Tournament will be important. The Aggies have won three straight and seven of their last 10 games.

“I thought that this past weekend (Nathan) Dettmer, (Will) Johnston and (Justin) Lamkin all had great starts,” Schlossnagle said. “For the first time we threw Wansing out of the bullpen and maybe the dumb coach should have done that during the season and maybe that would have got him going on the mound a little bit.

“But I asked him after he pitched so well on Saturday if he could take that confidence into today, and he said he could, then we had a good meeting yesterday about a gameplan. There were some balls hit pretty hard there toward the end that they hit right at us. But we’ll take it and just keep moving on.”

Following Wansing’s terrific start, the bullpen came in and did its job to finish off the Volunteers.

Tennessee managed just one hit in the game.

Schlossnagle is simply focused on keeping his team locked in as the 2023 SEC Baseball Tournament continues to unfold.

“I think you’ve just got to play good baseball,” he said. “I don’t think you can worry about the what ifs and if this happens then that happens. At the end of the day, everything before now is just pretense.”

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