Everything Tony Vitello said on a series loss at Alabama
Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello took some time following his team’s 7-6 loss at Alabama on Sunday afternoon to answer some questions in postgame. The following is a written transcript of the Tony Vitello press conference.
On how the eighth inning unfolded…
“Yeah, I mean we’re facing their best hitter, or arguably their best hitter. The other guys in their lineup might take offense to that. They are kind of like our lineup. 1-9 is capable of doing damage and even got a couple of guys off the bench, but that situation was obviously big. We had a mad scramble there before that with a great catch by Dylan [Dreiling], but we made a poor pitch to a really good hitter, and he made him pay.”
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On AJ Russell’s return…
“He was good. It was good that we were able to start him based on how well our offense did Friday. And then Saturday, Beam threw well enough that we didn’t have to use him or go to the bullpen. So, the fact that he was able to go through his routine, get out there and get to a decent amount of pitches, but at the same time, we didn’t gas him out. I think he was feeling not at 100 percent, so we’re not going to go crazy and send him back out there. But, he did everything we wanted him to today.”
On takeaways from the series…
“Alabama is good and they were better than us this weekend. We need to get better and there’s a bunch of different situations, whether it’s base-running, hitting with some calm, or pitchers… we’re open for business. [AJ] Russell will continue to build up pitch count, and that will maybe deplete some opportunities for guys. But we’re open for business and looking for guys who can help us in certain situations.”
