Tony Vitello shares initial impressions of Evansville

Tony Vitello knows Tennessee will have its hands full with Evansville during Super Regional play this weekend in Knoxville. The Purple Aces pulled off perhaps the biggest upset of Regionals, taking out host and No. 16 overall seed East Carolina to advance to Supers for the first time in program history.

Evansville became just the ninth No. 4 Regional seed to advance since 1999. Now as they look to keep their Cinderella run going against the Vols, Vitello had high praises on what the Purple Aces bring to the table.

“They’re an older team,” the coach said. “Certainly can swing the bat well and those two things kind of go hand-in-hand. They’ve got a lot of players that have been there for a while and accumulated some reps. Then also pitching, it kind of starts with their lefty, who was Conference Pitcher of the Year as a freshman. They’ve leaned on their closer, who’s got a real good breaking ball, a lot. The center fielder can run down a ball as good as anybody. There’s a lot of pieces there that are similar to the good teams in our league.”

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This is only the fourth NCAA Tournament in program for Evansville since it joined Division I in 1978. It got there after bouncing back from a 13-run loss to ECU to claim the winner-take-all matchup in a narrow 6-5 victory. Mark Shallenberger’s three-run shot in the bottom of the sixth inning proved the different to give the Purple Aces the lead for good.

Shallenberger has been Evansville’s best hitter this season with a .390 batting average and 17 home runs. Kip Fougerousse is also a threat to go yard every time he steps up to the plate, leading the team with 21 homers. Both players are seniors.

As far as pitcher, the Purple Aces leaned on Shane Harris to close out the final inning of their win against East Carolina. He leads the team with a 3.63 ERA this season along with 68 strikeouts.

Vitello had high praise for Evansville coach Wes Carrol in constructing that roster, and is ready for the challenge that awaits this weekend.

“I’ve known coach Carrol for a long time,” he said. “He’s been really good at kind of running around, beating the bushes and finding guys that he knows are gonna develop into something even better than they already are. So that’s kind of been the makeup of that team. There’s a lot of guys that developed and become even better than they are. Altogether, it makes for a really good team.”

The opening game of the Super Regional between Evansville and Tennessee is set for 3 p.m. ET on Friday at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.