After a blazing start to the season, the Tennessee Volunteers have yet to drop a game on their road back to Omaha in hopes of defending their national title. This 13-0 start to the season has come off the back of a plethora of playmakers on both sides of the ball, but one name tends to show up nearly every game for the revamped Vols offense, second baseman Gavin Kilen.
Kilen, a top MLB draft prospect, currently leads the Vols in nearly every offensive stat. He has posted a .488 batting average over his 41 plate appearances, sending seven over the fences for a home run and compiling 19 RBIs, both a team-high.
Additionally, Kilen leads the Vols in total bases by over 15 with a total of 49, the next closest being 33 from freshman phenom Levi Clark. Those 49 total bases put him fourth in the nation for the stat, with his 1.195% slugging percentage ranked second among all Division I players behind East Tennessee State University’s Grant Gallagher.
Kilen is coming off a monstrous week in which he earned himself SEC Player of the Week honors by being instrumental in Tennessee’s win at the Astros Foundation College Classic in Houston. Over the four games last week, Kilen compiled at least one hit and one RBI in each of them.
In last week’s 18 plate appearances, Kilen made contact with the ball 11 times, making for a staggering .611 batting average. Seven hits went for extra bases, and five were home runs.
Kilen’s best performance of the week came on Saturday against Rice when he nearly finished the game with a cycle but was unable to record a single, sending multiple balls into the stands of right field and reaching home five times in the game. Kilen was responsible for driving in eight total runs for the Vols throughout the week, with four of those coming in this game.
He hasn’t let the award get to his head, however, as he has compiled five more hits and two more RBIs over his eight plate appearances this week, helping the Vols win their midweek games against Radford and Xavier.
Kilen and his dominant start to the season have played a role in the Vols moving up to No. 2 in the D1Baseball rankings and solidifying the No. 1 spot in other polls such as Baseball America and the Coaches Poll.
Tennessee and Kilen continue their season this weekend at home in a series against St. Bonaventure.
