Tennessee entered the weekend facing its biggest test to date and passed emphatically.

In a top five tilt with heavy SEC and national implications, the Vols won two of three games to claim their fifth-straight series win over Kentucky in Lexington.

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The performances moved Tennessee up in the latest D1Baseball Top 25 on Monday, jumping one spot to No. 3 as it inches towards the final month of the regular season.

The Vols (33-7, 12-6 SEC) are the third highest ranked SEC team, placing behind No. 1 Texas A&M and No. 2 Arkansas, which are coming off of series wins over Alabama and South Carolina, respectively.

Kentucky traded places with Tennessee, dropping to No. 4 while Vanderbilt moved to the edge of the top 10 at No. 11 after taking two of three from Florida and Georgia up four places to No. 20 after a series win over Ole Miss.

Alabama and South Carolina fell to No. 23 and No. 24, respectively.

The series between Tennessee and Kentucky was one of the most highly anticipated match ups in college baseball over the weekend and it lived up to the billing.

The Vols scored two runs in the second inning on a Hunter Ensley home run and then again in the fifth but an error-plagued seventh allowed the Wildcats to take the lead and win Game 1 on Friday, 5-3.

Tennessee jumped out again in Game 2 on Saturday, scoring five runs in the first, including back-to-back homers from Christian Moore and Blake Burke to pave the way for a convincing 9-4 victory to even the series.

Moore was the headliner again on Sunday. With the series on the line, Moore homered three times, with his second in the seventh erasing a four-run deficit and breaking the program's all-time career home run record at 45.

After Kentucky pulled back ahead in the bottom seventh, Moore and Kavares Tears mashed home runs in the eighth to give the Vols the leas for good in a 13-11 win.

Tennessee returns to Knoxville for a five-game home stand over the next week.

The Vols host Western Carolina (21-16) in a midweek tilt on Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET on SEC Network+.

Tennessee jumps back into conference play to face Missouri in the first of three games at Lindsey Nelson Stadium on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. ET (SEC Network). Game 2 is slated for 6:30 p.m. ET on Saturday (SEC Network+) with the series wrapping up with Game 3 on Saturday at Noon (SEC Network).

The Tigers (18-23, 6-12) have a series win over Florida earlier this month but are coming off two of three losses to LSU last weekend.

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