Tony Vitello: 'This team is not defending but pursuing'
Tennessee coach Tony Vitello mentioned Wednesday after the second-round win over Alabama in the Southeastern Conference Baseball Tournament that his team has learned how to take a punch.
The big punch in that one was a two-out throwing error that led to four unearned runs and the lead. Tennessee fought back in a massive way for the 15-10 win over the Tide. On Thursday, Tennessee was down 4-0 in the fourth inning only to battle back to tie the ballgame, take the lead and lose it in the 10th and then finally knock off top-seeded Texas in 12 innings.
There’s been plenty of punches thrown Tennessee’s way. Now, the Volunteers are punching back.
“I think that they’ve matured,” skipper Tony Vitello said in postgame. “That was the one thing about our team in ’23, obviously, had their own story, which to me was a really good one, but ’22 was a wild group, and ’24 was, too. But there was an extra sense of maturity there.
“You have to kind of ride out the storm I guess is the right way to say. We did that today. It was not a good storm. It was a no-hit storm, is what it was, but it’s a nine inning ballgame.”
Tennessee had no answer for spot-starter Ethan Walker through the first four innings, as the southpaw faced the minimum. The squad got to him in the fifth and finally hung a few crooked numbers on two-straight innings. Cannon Peebles drove in two on a single, Dean Curley walked with the bases loaded and Reese Chapman tied it at 4-4 with a sacrifice fly to left field.
From there, it was scoreless for the next three innings thanks to the career-outing of Brandon Arvidson out of the Tennessee bullpen.
“The curveball was really working today. Felt like I could throw it anywhere, and the fastball command was good, as well,” the reliver said afterwards.
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And then it was the Gavin Kilen show. Not once, but twice the shortstop handed Tennessee an extra-inning lead. He homered in the 10th and then drove in two in the 12th on a double to the wall in right field. The infielder has now driven in five runs in two games at the Hoover Met.
“Just doing a great job of reading the reports,” Kilen said of his preparation for moments like Thursday. “I just got a good pitch to do that on a couple times, and fought some good counts, got deep for the home run and just did my job to help us win.”
It is towards end of May. Any talk of the ‘defending national champions’ needs to stall as this is a different team with a different identity. One of the characteristic traits starting to pop up for this team the past two weeks is its ability to battle back from adversity. It’s already done it on back-to-back occasions here in Hoover.
“I think this team is not defending but pursuing,” the coach concluded. “I think pursuing is just, again, to get better and come to the park every day. We really have not played our best baseball.”
Tennessee awaits the winner of Oklahoma and Vanderbilt for semifinal action Saturday afternoon at 1 o’clock ET form the Hoover Met.
