Tennessee fans shouldn't let assumption overlook achievement

Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello has done tremendous things in building the Vol baseball program to national prominence. He’s obviously taken the program to the top in winning a national championship. 

Vitello has, year in and year out in a day and age of the transfer portal and the MLB draft, assembled a talented roster. His teams, at times, have been dominant. Other times, it’s more challenging but either way, Vitello’s teams are a model of consistency. 

You can go on and on about his achievements but maybe his greatest achievement? Five-straight trips to the super regionals. To put it in perspective, no program over the last five years has made the super regional three times.

It’s an unmatched model of consistency in postseason play in a time where parody in college baseball is at an all-time high. 

And it’s also a time were fans don’t truly appreciate it because Vitello has the standard so high for the Tennessee program. To advance to the super regional, through what’s the toughest week of the year, is phenomenal. 

Vitello has lost one regional game at Tennessee. That’s just bananas. His program has won 14 of their last 15 regional games. 

I think winning the national title in baseball is arguably the toughest achievement in college sports and it’s getting tougher. 

The SEC wasn’t a bad baseball league this season. The regular season in the “it just means more conference” was an absolute grind. The SEC didn’t fare well overall in regional play with only Auburn, Arkansas, LSU, and Tennessee advancing to the super regionals. I think the struggles have more to do with with the other teams than it does with the SEC being bad. Every team has hitters and every team has a couple of pitchers and regional weekends are just weird. 

It’s why I think Vitello’s regional record is as impressive as anything he’s done. When you get to super regional play, and Omaha especially, if you stay in the winners bracket, your can manage your pitching staff. A super regional is just another weekend series, aside from it’s win or you go home. You have played those series all year. The College World Series has off days to help you manage your team. Regional play is three, maybe four days of chaos where critical decisions have to be made.

A manager and his coaching staff have more decisions to make in a regional weekend than any other weekend of the season. 

Before the first pitch on Friday, Vitello and Frank Anderson had to make a critical decision when it came to their game one starter. Vitello stayed true to what he had done all year and it worked. Think of this, if you start Liam Doyle on Saturday instead of Friday, he’s not on the mound Monday night to to close things out. 

In game, there’s more management. Do you have a quick hook? Does a pitcher have to give you more innings so you let him work through rough patches knowing you might give up a few runs? 

It’s just different and it always has been, even before the expanded postseason back in the 90’s, managing regional weekend was gut wrenching. Now with the expanded postseason, more teams are invited to the party and there are more teams who can upset the party than ever before. 

Under Tony Vitello, the Vols have never had their party crashed. An amazing feat that everyone should have been reminded of Monday night as Doyle shoved the last 2+ innings to advance the Vols. It’s also something fans should greatly appreciate when you see that seven of the top 16 seeds failed to advance.

Tony Vitello’s program has made the hard look easy the last five years advancing to the super regional, which is an achievement that should never be taken lately.