To open Tennessee baseball’s series with Texas on Friday, Josh Elander handed Tegan Kuhns the ball as the Vols’ starting pitcher. What followed was one of the better pitching performances you’ll see in college baseball.
Kuhns pitched 7.0 innings while hurling 113 pitches. In that time, he gave up no runs, just four hits and one walk and struck out a career-best 15 batters. He earned the win as UT held onto the buffer he gave the offense, ultimately taking game one 5-1 in Knoxville.
This included limiting the bats of the top of the Longhorns’ vaunted order.
“I think it was the strikes,” Tennessee head coach Josh Elander said after the game. “I mean, that’s not a fun three (top of Texas’ order) to navigate. Those are two of the most famous guys in the portal, and then I remember seeing Pack running around playing at the East Cobb and all that. He’s always just been able to kind of make a mess of the game in a good way for his team. But those three right there, I think really just pouring strikes. I mean, he was throwing a lot of heaters at the top of the zone.
“If you look with Tinney, they had some good battles where he’s smoking some balls foul. And maybe they’re sitting on the breakers, the kind of cat-and-mouse game. But I think when you get going 95, 96 with good takeoff and good vert at the top of the zone, you get some of those sword swings that opens up the depth of the breaking ball at the bottom. He did just a really good job competing tonight.”
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Here is video of each and every strikeout from Kuhns’ career outing:
Tegan Kuhn highlight tape drop. He was an Electric Factory today. 🔥🔥🔥
7 IN 4 H O R 1 BB 15 K pic.twitter.com/7zAuyIsEqM
— 11Point7 College Baseball (@11point7) May 9, 2026
