Tony Vitello on Tennessee's Super Regional loss: It's hard to get to the College World Series

The Tennessee Volunteers won 57 games on the diamond this season. The Vols were viewed as the consensus best team in all of college baseball throughout most of the year. But Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello knows that advancing to the College World Series is not easy.

Tennessee advanced out of the Knoxville Regional and was matched up with Notre Dame in the Super Regional round. Notre Dame came out strong in Game 1 of the best-of-three on Friday, but Tennessee forced a Game 3. In the decisive Game 3, Notre Dame came out on top, advancing to Omaha.

After the loss, Vitello went in-depth on how hard it is to make it to the College World Series, and admitted that regular season success doesn’t mean a whole lot when a clean slate begins in the postseason.

“Yeah, it’s the way that it goes,” Vitello said. “It’s not easy, and I’m glad you asked the question. I don’t know how I’m doing up here. Probably some people think good, some people think bad. Everyone’s got an opinion on everything, which is fair. Fair play to them. But it’s hard. It’s not – I’m searching for the right way say it to not offend anybody. But I’ve had people that have played baseball – can’t wait to see you in Omaha, made reservations in Omaha, this, that. This is not easy.

“Ask Notre Dame. They came up short last year. This year they did not. I’m sure it drove them like crazy, maybe that gave them a little edge in Friday’s game. I would like to make it automatic, I’d like to be able to recruit that well. I certainly can’t coach that well that it is automatic. But ask any team in the country that gets there or has every played there, has ever come up short. It is not automatic. So I don’t think anyone had that in their mind because of what our accomplishments were. They’ve just been such a good group about tackling the next thing.”

Vitello on trying to reach the College World Series: ‘This is chaos’

Vitello’s first season as Tennessee’s head coach was in 2018. That year, the Vols went 29-27. They went 40-21 in 2019, advancing to the championship game in the Chapel Hill Regional before losing. Tennessee was off to a 15-2 start in 2020 before the season was canceled. Last year, the Vols went 50-18 and made it to Omaha, finishing in seventh place in the College World Series.

Making it to Omaha back-to-back seasons is no easy task, and Vitello knows that missing out on the College World Series will motivate his team moving into next season.

“And I think the fact they came up short today – knowing their character, and I hate to speak for them,” continued Vitello. “I’ll end my long answer here. I think this group is really good and one reason why is because they’ll be more upset about coming up short today, whereas you guys will fairly write about didn’t make it to this spot, or didn’t carry on, or didn’t win a national championship, which was in my opinion far from our mind. So I think it’s one of the reasons they’ve been impressive. But said it on Friday or Saturday, this is chaos. For good reason.”