Nine UT Athletes Qualify For Finals On Friday At SEC Championships

BATON ROUGE, La. — Tennessee will have plenty of scoring opportunities on the third and final day of the SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships after nine athletes booked trips to finals in Friday’s running event prelims at LSU’s Bernie Moore Stadium.
 
The Vols will be represented well in the 110-meter hurdles final with four UT men qualifying past prelims Friday evening. Graduate student Devon Brooks led Tennessee and paced the field with a wind-aided (+2.3 m/s) mark of 13.36 seconds, winning the first heat to automatically qualify for Saturday’s final. Cayman Islands international Rasheem Brown was next across the finish line in heat 1 with a mark of 13.43 to earn a capital Q, and grad student Jesse Henderson qualified on time with his mark of 13.76 in the first heat.
 
Redshirt freshman Leonard Mustari competed in the second heat of the 110-meter hurdles and turned in a time of 13.51 (+2.7 m/s) to place second in the race and become the fourth Vol to qualify for the final. The Big Orange quartet will look to pile up points for Tennessee at 6:45 p.m. ET on the center straightaway.
 
Lady Vol graduate Charisma Taylor made her SEC outdoor debut and kicked off her busy weekend competing in the 100-meter hurdles prelims. The Nassau, Bahamas, native booked a trip to Saturday’s final, running a slightly wind-aided 12.93 (+2.2 m/s) to place fourth overall and second in her heat.
 
Stepping on the track for the men’s 1,500-meter prelims, Vol redshirt sophomore Canaan Anderson raced into the final with a time of 3:52.07 in the opening heat. The Murfreesboro native ran strategically to place top three in his heat and threw down his signature ‘thumbs down’ gesture in triumphant fashion at the finish after qualifying for his first career SEC outdoor final.
 
Entering the meet as the top seed and NCAA Division I leader in the men’s 400-meter dash, Tennessee junior Emmanuel Bynum won his heat out of lane nine with an impressive time of 44.86 to automatically advance to the final. His mark was the second-fastest overall on Friday, and the Memphis native was one of three athletes to run the quarter-mile in less than 45 seconds in the SEC prelims.
 
Tennessee had two athletes qualify out of the men’s and women’s 100-meter dash prelims, beginning with junior Javonte Harding tabbing a season-best 10.13 seconds to win the second heat on the men’s side. Lady Vol junior Jacious Sears was the top performer in the women’s prelims, tying her PR…