Tony Vitello evaluates Tennessee's readiness to handle the different dynamic of regionals

Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello knows his team has to be ready for a challenge this weekend at the Clemson Regional that is unlike anything else his team faces in a season.

“It’s certainly a different dynamic,” Vitello said Monday.

But Vitello also knows that it is not a totally new dynamic.

In addition to playing in the NCAA Tournament the last few seasons, Vitello’s Tennessee team has played in early season tournaments before that mirror the similarities of Regional play.

Those experiences can provide learning points for Regionals.

“It’s a four-team tournament,” Vitello said of Regionals. “It’s very similar to — this year had a different querk to it. We played at Grand Canyon. We played at three different sites. But I believe our first year here was Pensacola — or I guess it was our second year. Some of those tournaments we’ve gone to in Round Rock, it’s four teams. It’s one site, and it’s a fun environment. Everyone’s trying to be the best team. Our job is just to kind of manage the things that we can and try and be the best team in each of those categories, whether it be as small as just your time in the cage being valuable or body language, handling adversity, whatever you want to bring up.”

The Clemson Regional will be headlined with the two teams in orange with Clemson being the No. 4 national seed and riding a 16-game winning streak into the NCAA Tournament and Tennessee’s disappointment last season in the Super Regionals on the mind of many fans watching.

The regionals two other teams are still ones for Vitello and the Volunteers to take seriously. Lipscomb finished the year 36-24 and beat Notre Dame — the program that eliminated the Volunteers from the NCAA Tournament last season.

Charlotte, Tennessee’s first round opponent, is also entering on a hot streak after winning the Conference USA Championship. The 49ers have won 10 of 11 games.

“With this team in particular and you talking about being on the road, I think there’s some confidence in the back pocket of our guys that they’ve been at three of the most tradition based SEC programs in the history of the conference on the road, seen what that looks like, experienced it,” Vitello said. “Some good, some bad, and then ultimately kind of put the pieces of the puzzle to win a road series against South Carolina, who’s hosting their own regional. Again, I think there’s confidence through the adversity part of it, of having to just go through it but then also parallel to our teams evolving and slightly improving day in and day out. They improved to the point where they were able to win — again, not just on the road but against one of the best teams in the country.”