Tennessee and Florida played 18 innings of baseball Friday in Gainesville.
The series will be determined Saturday night at 6:30.
With Thursday night's opener having been postponed due to inclement weather, the No. 3 Volunteers and the Gators vied in a doubleheader that yielded a 6-2 victory for Tennessee and a 4-3 win for Florida. Friday's split left Tennessee with a 38-9 overall record and a 16-7 mark in Southeastern Conference play.
"I think our guys have a good energy and a good bounce to them," Tennessee coach Tony Vitello said. "Our execution, even in the first game, wasn't as good as it can be, but we've got three games here in almost 24 hours, so you might as well just lump them all together and just keep playing.
"It's right that it's 1-1, because these are two evenly matched teams, and we all kind of know what this league is about."
The Gators are 24-22 and 10-13 entering Saturday's finale.
Tennessee broke a 2-2 tie during the third inning of the opener when Billy Amick doubled down the left-field line to score Christian Moore before Dylan Dreiling singled up the middle to score Amick. The Vols maintained that 4-2 advantage until the eighth inning, when Reese Chapman's sacrifice fly to center scored Amick, and Dreiling made it 6-2 in the ninth on a single to right that scored Blake Burke.
Amick and Dreiling had three hits apiece in the opener and combined for three RBIs.
Chris Stamos got the start and pitched the first three innings before AJ Causey came in to work the next five to improve to 8-3 this season. Kirby Connell had a hitless ninth inning for his fourth save.
"AJ was outstanding," Vitello said. " We never have a set deal on when we want to bring him into a game."
The Gators jumped on Tennessee starter Drew Beam in the second game with home runs by Brody Donay and Colby Shelton in the third inning for a 3-0 lead. Beam regrouped and worked through the sixth, and an Amick home run to left in the eighth pulled the Vols within 3-2.
Cade Kurland's RBI single up the middle off Aaron Combs in the bottom of the eighth made it 4-2, and the Vols got within a run again in the ninth on Moore's groundout RBI.
Moore was tabbed earlier Friday as the player of the month for April after a vote by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. The junior second baseman and leadoff hitter had a .452 average for the month and racked up 28 hits, 10 home runs, 27 RBIs and 63 total bases. He got on base 50.7% of the time.
Lady Vols champs
Tennessee won a second consecutive SEC regular-season softball championship Friday night when the No. 3 Lady Vols defeated No. 24 Kentucky 8-3 in Knoxville.
The Lady Vols improved to 39-9 overall and to 18-5 in SEC play, with the league title becoming outright later Friday evening due to Texas A&M's 2-1 loss at Florida. Kiki Milloy became Tennessee's all-time leader in total bases when her three-run homer to right-center field in the fourth inning put the Lady Vols ahead to stay at 5-3.
Tennessee won all eight conference series this season.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.