First pitch between the Vols and 49ers is slated for 6 p.m. EDT. The game will be televised by ESPNU. Tom Hart (PxP) and Kyle Peterson (analyst) will be on the call.
The Vols lead the all-time series versus Charlotte, 4-2.
Friday’s contest will mark Tennessee’s 13th NCAA Tournament appearance in program history. The Vols have advanced to the College World Series five times (1951, 1995, 2001, 2005, 2021).
Tennessee (38-19, 16-14 SEC) is a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament Clemson Regional.
No. 3 Charlotte (34-26, 17-12 C-USA) and No. 4 Lipscomb (36-24, 23-7 ASUN) will also compete in the Clemson Regional.
Tennessee will open NCAA Tournament play versus Charlotte on Friday. First pitch between the Vols and 49ers is slated for 6 p.m. EDT and will be televised by ESPNU.
Ahead of the NCAA Tournament Clemson Regional on Friday, sixth-year Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello met with media. Vitello’s media availability can be watched below.
Chase Briscoe’s No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team has been issued the strictest penalty in the NASCAR rule book for an infraction with the Next Gen car. Both Briscoe and the No. 14 team were docked 120 points and 25 playoff points Wednesday. Johnny …
Chase Briscoe’s No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team has been issued the strictest penalty in the NASCAR rule book for an infraction with the Next Gen car.
Both Briscoe and the No. 14 team were docked 120 points and 25 playoff points Wednesday. Johnny Klausmeier, Briscoe’s crew chief, has been suspended for the next six NASCAR Cup Series races and fined $250,000.
NASCAR found a counterfeit part on Briscoe’s Ford Mustang. The sections of the rule book cited included the underwing and engine panel, and the infraction found on Briscoe’s car pertained to an engine panel and counterfeit NACA duct.
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“When we bring cars post-race to the R&D Center, they are completely stripped down to basically nuts, bolts, washer laid out on the floor,” NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer said. “The engine panel NACA, which is basically under the engine of the car, and the NACA duct, which allows air to travel through the NACA.
“(To) back up through the development process of the Next Gen car, we basically put an opening in the windshield as well as slots in the back glass and a NACA duct in the engine panel to allow air to get in areas of the car to help keep the car cool. So, it’s a single-sourced part that you cannot fabricate, you cannot mess with, you cannot counterfeit, and we’ve been very clear with that.”
Teams are not to modify single-sourced supplied parts of the Next Gen car. Briscoe’s team was issued an L3 penalty, the first one issued to a team under the Next Gen deterrence system.
L3-level penalties cover:
Counterfeiting of modifying Next Gen single source vendor supplied parts and/or assemblies.
Engine infractions not meeting the rules.
Engine performance enhancements.
Altering/modifying tires and/or fuel.
Violating the vehicle testing policy.
The penalty drops Briscoe to 31st in the Cup Series championship standings.
Briscoe’s Ford Mustang was one of four taken to the NASCAR R&D after Monday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. NASCAR chose Briscoe’s car and Justin Haley’s car for teardown and engine dyno. Martin Truex Jr.’s No. 19 and Alex Bowman’s No. 48 were taken for engine dyno. No issues were found with the other three cars.
Stewart-Haas Racing will not appeal the penalty to its No. 14 team.
“To be honest, I was a little surprised that they would go down this path,” Sawyer said. “Talking with the race team, they have some process and procedure within their race shop that they feel like they need to button, and they will. So yeah, we were a little surprised just knowing and them knowing as well the severity of it and that it would rise to an L3 penalty. Modifying a single-sourced part, as we’ve seen, that falls into an L2 bucket. But when you counterfeit a part, it falls into a bucket with engine and messing with tires and things, fuel, that isn’t going to be tolerated.”
Former Vol Austin Knight to play Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament Clemson Regional.
No. 2 seed Tennessee (38-19, 16-14 SEC) will play in the NCAA Tournament Clemson Regional.
The Vols will play No. 3 Charlotte (34-26, 17-12 C-USA) on Friday at 6 p.m. EDT (ESPNU).
Former Vol Austin Knight will play against Tennessee in the Clemson Regional. He played for Tennessee from 2019-20.
During his freshman season in 2019, he appeared in 15 games, including one start.
Knight hit a three-run home run in consecutive games as a sophomore before the season was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. He was also a member of the 2020 SEC Spring Honor Roll.
Knight, the 2022 Conference USA Preseason Player of the Year, has appeared in 53 games, including 48 starts, in 2023.
He recorded a .242 batting average, 11 home runs, eight doubles and 38 RBIs ahead of the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
While there were never any thoughts from Ryan Blaney that he wasn’t going to win again in the NASCAR Cup Series, the driver who admits he lacks self-confidence did doubt himself during a winless drought. “Like, am I good enough to compete?” Blaney …
While there were never any thoughts from Ryan Blaney that he wasn’t going to win again in the NASCAR Cup Series, the driver who admits he lacks self-confidence did doubt himself during a winless drought.
“Like, am I good enough to compete?” Blaney reflected late Monday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Am I as good as I was a year ago? Can I still do this? Am I progressing and getting smarter as a race car driver and still have the same skills I had two years ago?
The 59-race winless drought in points-paying races was finally snapped in the postponed Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. It was the first crown jewel win of Blaney’s career and his first drive into victory lane since the summer of 2021 when he won back-to-back races in Michigan and Daytona.
Nigel Kinrade/Motorsport Images
“I don’t think I ever thought, like ‘I will never win a race again,’” Blaney continued. “It’s just sometimes you doubt your abilities when things don’t go your way or you make mistakes. Like, ‘Gosh, I’m getting kind of messy with the way I’m doing things.’
“I was very excited because I haven’t won in a long time, and it was the 600. So, I was pretty pumped up. There were multiple reasons there, but no, I didn’t think that we could never win again.”
The typically calm and cool Blaney admitted he might shed a tear after getting from his car on the frontstretch. And so pumped up from the win and the fans still in attendance, Blaney pulled an uncharacteristic move of going into the grandstands like his Team Penske counterpart and Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden had done Sunday.
“A big weekend, and obviously, winning the 600 is massive,” Blaney said. “I grew up coming here watching my dad race for a long time as a kid. It’s just what we did every summer. (It’s) really cool, and it was cool for my parents to be here as well. So, that was a special moment.
“Fun night, that’s for sure. Monday races seem to go really well for me. I don’t know what it is, but definitely a fun night.”
There were no mistakes made by Blaney or his team through 600 miles. Unlike other races that slipped through their fingers after strong performances or cruel misfortune not of their doing, the No. 12 was locked in at Charlotte.
No penalties were called on Blaney or his team on pit road. Each restart went according to plan, and there were many. And many where Blaney lined up on the front row either as the leader or in second place.
Blaney and his No. 12 Penske team were all in sync at CMS. John K Harrelson/Motorsport Images
Blaney’s Ford Mustang looked as good as it did before the race as it did after 400 laps. Whereas Blaney — and the team — have been criticized in the past for not closing races, this time the group was perfect and left no room for condemnation.
“I’m really proud of the effort of our whole group tonight of doing everything right and not making any mistakes,” said Blaney. “Yeah, I’m used to disappointment, especially after the last year and a half, and it’s nice to be able to pull one off and have the speed that deserves to win – and actually win. A handful of times last year, I thought we had plenty of speed to win, and just something happened. That definitely gets tiresome. Tonight, I’m really happy it was able to work out.”
At times, Blaney acknowledged, it could feel like an eternity between career win number seven and eight. He won three races in 2021 — the first time in his career he won multiple races in a single season. The 20 top-10 finishes Blaney earned that season were also a single-season best.
The same execution lacked in 2021: three DNFs, no wins, and three fewer top-10 finishes. But the opportunities were there, as shown by the laps led (636) and average finish (13.6). Winning, however, doesn’t come easy in NASCAR, and Blaney learned it the hard way over the last year and a half.
When a win does come, though, it really does cure a lot.
“Sometimes you just get in these streaks where things just aren’t going right,” said Blaney. “And then you feel like you’re doing everything right, maybe your cars aren’t fast enough to win races or you’re making too many mistakes. It can definitely be frustrating.
“It’s easy to get down on yourself when you don’t win. You’ve got to think to yourself, can I still do it? Can I still compete at a winning level? So it’s easy to kind of doubt yourself. But at the end of the day, we all pulled together, and everyone in the 12 group did a good job of working on things that we could get better.
“Yeah, it does feel like an eternity. I told Jonathan [Hassler, crew chief] and those guys what a cool first one to get together. Winning the 600. That’s a super cool one to win.”
Charlotte sophomore outfielder Cam Fisher played at Hardin Valley Academy in Knoxville, Tennessee. He won the 2016 District 4-AAA championship and 2019 Region 2-AAA title at Hardin Valley Academy.
Fisher was teammates with Tennessee pitcher Bryce Jenkins at Hardin Valley Academy.
Fisher is a First-Team All-Conference USA selection in 2023, recording a .364 batting average, 30 home runs, 64 RBIs, 12 doubles and six stolen bases.
Before arriving at Charlotte, Fisher redshirted at Ole Miss in 2020 and played at Walters State Community College in 2021.
Saving fuel throughout a 66-lap green-flag run to the finish, Justin Allgaier collected his first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory of the season – and the first this year for JR Motorsports – in Monday’s twice-rain-delayed Alsco Uniforms 300 at …
Saving fuel throughout a 66-lap green-flag run to the finish, Justin Allgaier collected his first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory of the season — and the first this year for JR Motorsports — in Monday’s twice-rain-delayed Alsco Uniforms 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Allgaier, the pole winner, beat runner-up John Hunter Nemechek to the finish line by 7.829s, as the top three finishers — including third-place Cole Custer — stretched their fuel mileage from a lap 135 restart to the end of the race.
Austin Hill and Ty Gibbs, both of whom pitted for fuel in the closing stages, claimed the fourth and fifth positions, respectively.
“I’m speechless, man,” said Allgaier, who led a race-high 83 laps. “I didn’t know how much to save. Just lucky we had enough… I just cannot say enough about (crew chief) Jim Pohlman, everybody on the No. 7 team.
“It’s not been for lack of speed this year. We’ve battled. Tonight, was kind of the opposite. We had to go slow to go fast.”
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Nemechek led 57 laps, but Allgaier build a substantial lead at the end while conserving enough fuel to finish the race — and to do a celebratory burnout.
“We were racing each other pretty hard, and I burned my stuff up trying to get to him — and get around him,” Nemechek said. “I should have been a little more patient, I guess. But overall, really solid day. Good points day for us. I think that extends our points lead.”
In fact, Nemechek collected his fifth top-two finish of the season (with wins at Fontana and Martinsville) and holds a 10-point lead over Hill in the series standings.
But Allgaier and Nemechek might not have been left to battle for the win, had a radio issue not adversely affected Gibbs’ winning chances.
The driver of the No. 19 Toyota, who won last year’s Xfinity championship before graduating to the NASCAR Cup Series, led 52 laps and swept the first two stages of the race. But an extended pit stop, during which Gibbs’ crew changed his steering wheel (which housed a faulty radio button) dropped him to the rear of the field for a restart on lap 98. That ended Gibbs’ challenge for the win.
Parker Retzlaff ran sixth, followed by Jeb Burton, Carson Hocevar, Jeb Burton and Sammy Smith.
The race was delayed from Saturday by rain and restarted on Monday morning. But rain intervened again after the completion of the first stage, delaying the finish until after the running of the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Cup Series race, won by Ryan Blaney.
Alex Bowman will return to NASCAR Cup Series competition this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway after missing the last three points races because of a compression fracture. In preparation for his return, Bowman ran 170 laps Tuesday at North …
Alex Bowman will return to NASCAR Cup Series competition this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway after missing the last three points races because of a compression fracture.
In preparation for his return, Bowman ran 170 laps Tuesday at North Wilkesboro Speedway in a NASCAR-approved medical evaluation. Bowman was injured on April 25 when he suffered a fractured vertebra in a sprint car crash at 34 Raceway in Iowa.
“It’s a boost for all of us to have Alex return to the No. 48 car this weekend at our home track,” said Rick Hendrick. “He’s still 17th in points, which says a lot about how well the team performed at the start of the year. Alex has worked hard to rehab the injury and come back strong, and I look for him to continue having a championship-caliber season.”
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Bowman has been granted a playoff waiver by NASCAR. Before being sidelined, Bowman was ninth in the standings with the best average finish in the Cup Series.
Josh Berry drove the No. 48 Chevrolet in Bowman’s absence, including over the weekend in the All-Star Race. Berry won the Open to advance to the $1 million feature event. In his three races as Bowman’s substitute, Berry’s best finish was 10th at Dover Motor Speedway.
“Josh is an absolute pro,” said Jeff Andrews, president and general manager of Hendrick Motorsports. “His talent and hard work allowed the team to continue operating at a high level while Alex recovered. We can’t say enough about the great job he did under some challenging circumstances. We’re grateful to Josh and our partners at JRM for their support.”
