Tony Vitello makes the case for Tennessee to host NCAA Regional

Tennessee baseball entered the week in Hoover for the Southeastern Conference Baseball Tournament as a team on the outside looking into the NCAA Regional hosting picture.

The Vols had dropped five-straight series to end the regular season and six of the past seven. Still, 16 wins over conference teams is always impressive and the Vols boasted 12 wins over Quad 1 teams in the hunt.

A couple of wins, though, at the conference tournament changed that tune and Tennessee was sitting pretty following a 15-10 triumph of Alabama and a 7-5 victory in 12 innings over top-seeded Texas.  

“It would be great for our kids,” Tony Vitello said Saturday on the potential to host a regional. “We’re not in control of it, so we’ll let those people that are fully qualified sit in the room and diagnose that, but I think the fact we came here and got two wins and racked up RPI — I’d assume Texas and Vanderbilt are 1 and 2 or 3 or 4 in RPI and Alabama was a swing host team. We were able to beat them.” 

Now, the Vols (43-16) head home and await their NCAA Tournament appointment following a semifinal loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday. Tennessee remains right in the middle of an NCAA Regional hosting conversation.

NCAA will announce the 16 regional hosting sites on X, Sunday night at 8:30 PM ET. The full NCAA Tournament bracket will be unveiled Monday at 12 pm ET. Tennessee entered the day with a top-10 RPI and 18 wins over SEC opponents on the year. Ole Miss, TCU, Georgia Tech, Southern Miss, Dallas batiste, UCLA and Alabama are also battling for the final few host slots. 

“It would be awesome,” outfielder Hunter Ensley said. “Obviously, love playing in that stadium. To be honest with you, it doesn’t really matter whether we’re home or away. I’m just looking forward to competing a few more times.”

Tennessee owns the head-to-head over Ole Miss and Alabama with series-wins in the regular season. Florida, who also entered the week in the hosting conversation, also dropped a series to Tennessee in the regular season.

“Florida was a swing host team. We were fortunate enough to beat them in the regular season and outlasted them here,” Vitello continued. “Sour taste for everybody today, but Hunter (Ensley) pointed it out very well. The thing this team needs to do when we’ve got a three game set is win a series, and we’re going to have to earn a right to have another series or three-game set because the regionals is a little different animal.”

On Saturday morning, Tennessee was the No. 13 overall seed in the Field of 64 Projections issued by D1 Baseball with a potential super regional matchup with the Chapel Hill Regional and host North Carolina. The rest of the Knoxville Regional in this simulation was West Virginia (2), Miami (3) and Miami of Ohio (4).  

On3’s Jonathan Wagner predicted Tennessee as the No. 12 overall seed while Baseball America listed Tennessee as the No. 14 overall seed. How much does Saturday’s loss to No. 1 RPI team in Vanderbilt change things (if any) for the Vols?

“I think it would be phenomenal for the fans to have another go-around,” Vitello concluded. “It was kind of a quirky year where timing of some things and weather of things just wasn’t ideal, and then there were some times where we had an opportunity to entertain the fans, which is certainly not the goal, and it did not occur.

“These kids have played well on the road, but we’d like to play at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.”