Tennessee athletic director Danny White: 'We plan to win a boatload of national championships'
Danny White celebrated Tennessee Baseball’s first national championship Monday night at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha by looking ahead, dreaming of many more to come across his athletic department.
“So excited,” White told Volquest after No. 1 Tennessee beat No. 3 Texas A&M 6-5 in Game 3 of the College World Series Final. “We plan to win a boatload of national championships at Tennessee. You have to start somewhere, though, and this was so much fun to see this group to get to the pinnacle moment.”
It was the first time a Tennessee team won a national title since women’s track and field in 2009, a year after Tennessee women’s basketball won a national championship in 2008, its eighth under former head coach Pat Summitt.
Tennessee Baseball coach Tony Vitello was hired by former Vols athletic director John Currie in June 2017, replacing Dave Serrano. He wasted no time taking the Vols to the top.
Tennessee leads college baseball in wins the last four seasons
Tennessee in 2019, in Vitello’s second season, snapped a 14-year NCAA Tournament drought. The Vols have been in the tournament five straight years, have won two SEC regular-season championships, two SEC Tournament championships and have gone to the College World Series in Omaha three times, including the last two seasons.
“I think he is a great baseball coach, we have figured that out,” White added on Vitello. “More importantly, he is a great ambassador for our programs. He is so supportive of all of the head coaches here. We have a really good thing going. I think we are a growth stock. The best is yet to come.”
Tennessee is the first No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament to win the College World Series since Miami in 1999. The Vols have been the No. 1 seed in two of the last three NCAA Tournaments under Vitello.
Last year Tennessee won a game in Omaha for the first time since 2001 and this year returned to the championship round for the first time since 1951.
Tony Vitello: ‘Very surreal. Hard to center yourself … being lost in the moment’
Vitello’s Tennessee teams over the last four seasons have led college baseball in wins (211), win percentage (.773), NCAA Tournament wins (25) and home runs (566).
Tennessee’s 60 wins this season set a new program record — Vitello’s 2022 team held the previous record at 57 — and set a new SEC record. The Vols are the first national champion with 60 wins since 1985.
“Very surreal,” Vitello said late Monday during his postgame press conference. “Hard to center yourself, which is a good thing, being lost in the moment, I guess. Nothing too intelligent to say other than the first thing to say is I hope the fans that have turned this into an insane party, insane event, got the series that they wanted and that they deserved.”
“No better team to win for the University of Tennessee,” Vitello added, “than a bunch of guys who were truly the definition of a team.”
