Tony Vitello downplays Tennessee's recent success over Vanderbilt

This weekend, Tennessee baseball makes the short trip to Nashville for a rivalry series against a Vanderbilt team that they’ve pretty much owned so far this decade.

The Commodores last scored a series victory over their in-state foes in 2021, which is also the last time Vandy won even a single game against Tennessee. Since, it’s been all orange. The Volunteers swept the series in 2022 in Nashville with a 16-4 aggregate score. They met again in the SEC Tournament, where Tennessee triumphed again with a 10-1 blowout.

Crooked scores like that occurred in the 2023 series as well, with the Vols sweeping Vanderbilt in Knoxville last spring, winning the three games by scores of 4-3, 17-1 and 10-5. There’s no way around it: Tennessee has flat-out owned the Commodores over the last few seasons.

Obviously, such a streak of dominance is a major storyline heading into the teams’ matchup this weekend, but not to Volunteer head coach Tony Vitello, who did his best not to make a big deal out of the recent record. He knows that series can swing back and forth with such runs and UT is just happy to be on the positive side of this one lately.

“You know, it could be football, it could be basketball. I mean, sometimes we beat Kentucky in basketball and sometimes they beat us, and you know, I could go on up and down the other sports and you just better be ready to take lumps in this league, no matter who you are,” said Vitello at his press conference previewing the weekend.

Of course, those wins over Vanderbilt in the previous few seasons are pretty sweet, though, especially coming over a rival who’s typical very competitive nationally.

“And then the cool thing about it is, if you can keep navigating through it or keep pushing forward when you win, it’s kind of — they’re the best wins in the world, regardless if they come on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a Thursday. If you can get one of those SEC wins under your belt, it feels like it’s cause for busting out the champagne.”

Whether it’s Vanderbilt or Missouri or whoever, all SEC baseball wins are worth celebrating. But the celebration of those 2022 and 2023 wins is in the rearview window, and it’s time to look forward to what’s ahead.

“But you know, in our sport it’s get ready for the next day,” added Vitello, shifting focus towards this weekend, with three games coming up where Tennessee is in no way guaranteed to keep winning. If they’d like to keep the streak, the Vols will have to forget about year’s past and focus on winning the game in front of them.