Tony Vitello excited to see what Tennessee is all about during opening weekend

Tony Vitello and the Tennessee Volunteers are excited to get the baseball season started. After an early exit in 2022, the Volunteers have unfinished business to take care of, starting with the MLB Desert Invitational against Arizona on Friday, February 17th.

Ahead of that game, Vitello explained how this opening weekend will likely tell what Tennessee is going to be about this season and why he’s excited about it.

“Well, I know Arizona’s probably been looking forward to this game. I assume our guys have, too,” Tony Vitello said.

“We haven’t built things up too much. You love when an SEC comes to your place, I mean they’re playing in a conference that’s comparable to ours, anyway. And it’s a program with a ton of history, so it’s not like they don’t have a lot to stick their chest out about. But, when you get an opportunity to meet an SEC team, I like to think you get kind of geeked up.”

Arizona is a successful baseball program with a long history. The Wildcats have won four championships, including as recently as 2012. Still, the SEC is the dominant baseball conference, with the last three national champions coming from the SEC.

“And you know, this team is going to have a different personality, but when you’ve got the — whatever the theories were that were thrown out about our team last year, people are probably going to be excited to beat us and say, you know, stick their nose up at us or whatever emoji you want to use, at the start of the year, anyways. So, I think all that’s going to be a part of the storyline. But really, I think what it’s going to be is we’re kind of going down there, towards their home turf — not on their home field — and everyone’s going to be excited, across the country, to start opening,” Vitello explained.

“You got a fresh, clean start. So it’s going to be all the excitement you can imagine and let’s see what we’re all about. And no better way to do it than to challenge yourself against an Omaha-caliber club, in Arizona. And then for us, obviously we’ve done some good things lately, so that’ll come with that.”

Tennessee doesn’t just open this weekend against Arizona. It’s an invitational weekend and, along with Arizona, the Volunteers are going to have to play Grand Canyon and UC San Diego.

“Now Grand Canyon as a program, what they do well is they win a lot of games without everybody in the country knowing it. Because it’s not a huge school. By now you’ve seen YouTube basketball videos. It’s a really cool campus. It’s completely transformed into the university that it is, if you know the history of the school. And then the baseball program’s always been good. But probably because the stadium’s become really good, campus, the baseball program’s gotten even better. They got a shortstop that could be a first rounder and a couple other highly-touted guys.”

Tony Vitello didn’t speak much about UC San Diego. However, he did say that he’s excited to play them because one of the program’s coaches played for Vitello at Missouri. Though Vitello didn’t name the coach, he was clearly referring to Bryson LeBlanc, an assistant hitting coach.

“And we’ll worry about Day 3 when we get out there — that’s already a lot of thoughts. Day 3, for me, will be cool, because I’ll coach against, on the other coaching staff, will be a player that I coached at University of Missouri and love that kid. So we’ll have to be enemies for the day and hug it out afterward.”

Jared Dickey on his health

One player who Tony Vitello and the rest of the Volunteers are expecting to lean on this season is Jared Dickey. However, he battled injuries last season and needs to stay healthy in 2023 for Tennessee.

“I’m really excited to get a full year – hopefully – knock on wood. I’m feeling pretty good right now. It was really difficult having to sit out during that year, simply because it was so much fun being on the field with those guys,” Dickey said.

“I think every single guy in the dugout and on the field had each other’s backs, loved each other and wanted the best for one another. So, being on the bench and seeing the guys succeed was really awesome, but obviously I wanted to be out there. Hopefully this year, we can stay out there for the whole year and continue to contribute for the team.”