Tony Vitello reveals what this season did for Tennessee's program
The 2023 Tennessee season was a much more winding road than how the program performed in 2022. But the Volunteers season was without a doubt a successful one.
Tennessee made its way back to Omaha for the Men’s College World Series for the second time in three seasons. Previously, the Volunteers had never made two appearances in Omaha within a five-year span before.
Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello said on John & Vince on SportsTalk the return to Nebraska helped further entrench the program as a force to be wrecked with in the college baseball landscape.
“I think it’s solidified things a little bit more because what you don’t ever want to be — and you hate being accused of — is being a flash in the pan,” Vitello said. “It was a flash in the pan year in ’22. But I would say ever since the first year we got on campus, the goal is to keep building, keep building, keep building and, eventually, things get to a point hopefully where it’s just a standard that you want to uphold. But while this year was a windy road, it ended up being a successful one.”
The Volunteers finished with a 44-22 record on the season, the fourth straight full Tennessee season under Vitello that the team finished with at least 40 wins.
It was also the fourth straight NCAA Tournament appearance for the program. the Volunteers have only one stretch of this length in their history when they made five straight from 1993-1997. They made only one College World Series during that time.
But it wasn’t just making it to the Men’s College World Series that makes this year’s Tennessee team one to remember for Vitello. There were a whole lot of factors contributing to that.
“I don’t know how many years I’ll be on Rocky Top, bring on as many as possible, but if it’s however many a decade, 20 years, this will end up being the most valuable year: lessons learned, the new landscape of college baseball, the new landscape of our program,” Vitello said. “At the same time, we had a lot of success doing it and did something we haven’t done before. You bring it up as a compliment to the program. There’s been a lot of firsts since we’ve been on campus, but there’s still a lot of firsts left to accomplish. It’s kind of a nice combination out there right now.”