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Tennessee takes 'anytime, anywhere' mantra to Southern Miss for Super Regional

IMG_3593by:Grant Ramey•06/08/23•

GrantRamey

Tennessee Baseball
Tennessee Baseball (Tennessee Athletics)

Tennessee baseball put out its own statement on social media on Tuesday, not long after the NCAA announced the host schools and schedules for this weekend’s Super Regionals. The Vols, hoping to get a host spot, got sent on the road to face Southern Miss instead.

They made the message clear on Twitter, though: “Anytime. Anywhere.”

It was the same message on Thursday when head coach Tony Vitello and players met with reporters in Knoxville. This time of year, the location isn’t nearly as important as being alive and staying alive with a berth in the College Baseball World Series on the line.

“If they told us to go play on the moon,” outfielder Griffin Merritt said, “we’d go play on the moon.”

Up Next: Tennessee at Southern Miss, Saturday, 3 p.m. ET, ESPNU

The three-game series between Tennessee (41-19) and Southern Miss (45-18) is scheduled to start Saturday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time (TV: ESPNU). Game 2 will be Sunday and Game 3, if necessary, will be played Monday, with start times and TV for both games to be determined. 

Southern Miss was the last team standing in an upset-filled Auburn Regional, beating Penn, the four-team region’s No. 4 seed, on Monday. Tennessee came out of the Clemson Regional, beating Charlotte twice, sandwiched around a 6-5 win over Clemson, the No. 4 national seed, in 14 innings Saturday night.

Now both teams are trying to advance again, this time to Omaha. 

“You get to this time of year,” Vitello said, “no one is not going to be pouring their heart and soul out on to the field. You can come up with whatever set of circumstances you want. 

“For coaches, players, fanbases. Everyone is going to give it their best go. It is a baseball game, so there’s a lot of crazy things that can happen.”

Tony Vitello’s focus entering Super Regional: ‘Stay true to who we are’

Last season’s national champion, Ole Miss, detoured through Hattiesburg, sweeping Southern Miss 10-0 and 5-0 in two games in the Super Regional round. Meanwhile, Tennessee, the No. 1 overall seed in the field a year ago, lost to Notre Dame in three games at Lindsey Nelson Stadium in Knoxville.

“Really, whatever competitive edge you’re looking for, it’s got to be based off of what your team has become throughout the year,” Vitello said, “and there were teams last year that served as good examples for us now of, maybe the quickest path or the best path from point A to point B isn’t a straight line. And for us, there’s no way it’s been a straight line.”

Tennessee is 5-12 in true road games so far this season and were one-and-done in the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala., losing to Texas A&M 3-0 and managing just one hit. But the Vols put together arguably their best three games of baseball in Clemson over the weekend, when the stakes were the highest.

“I think whether we’re playing in Hoover, Clemson, at home, we finished the year in South Carolina,” Vitello said, “our zig-zag path, ups and downs, rollercoaster, whatever it’s been throughout this year — it’s who we are, so stay true to who we are. 

“And who we are is a group of guys who are pretty capable when we’re playing our best or close to it.”

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