Lucas Panzica discusses the upcoming super regional matchup for Tony Vitello and Vols Baseball
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00:00The college baseball postseason is down to 16 teams, and yes, Tennessee is one of them.
00:05Headed to the Fayetteville Super Regional, and I think it is one of the best coaching jobs
00:10done by the best coach on the University of Tennessee's campus.
00:17Hey, Lucas Panzeke here from 104.5 The Zone and A to Z Sports. Tennessee baseball
00:22is headed to Super Regionals for the fifth year in a row. That is the longest active streak
00:28in college baseball. Tony Vitello taking Tennessee to its seventh Super Regional all time. So the
00:35Vols had two Super Regional appearances before Tony V took over. They are now running on five
00:40straight. They'll take on Arkansas in Fayetteville this coming weekend with game one happening
00:45Saturday afternoon, playing for a chance to get to Omaha once again to compete for a national
00:52championship. This is after Tennessee won the Knoxville Regional, beating Wake Forest in an
00:56elimination game, 11 to five on Monday, breaking this game wide open with the seven run fourth
01:03inning. And from there, Liam Doyle closing it out, one of the best pitchers in all of college
01:08baseball, throwing heat to take Tennessee to the Super Regionals. It has been such a weird year for
01:14this Tennessee baseball team. Coming into this season as the defending national champs, the last
01:19undefeated team left in college baseball. They were the number one team in the country until about
01:25midseason. And then the inconsistencies started. Tennessee was 13 and 13 down the stretch. They
01:31struggled with inconsistency up and down the lineup, defensive struggles, miscues, uncharacteristic
01:38errors, struggles from their bullpen. And we went into the SEC tournament in Hoover wondering if
01:43Tennessee would even be able to host a regional. And the Vols made a little bit of noise in the SEC
01:49tournament. They knocked off one seed Texas and did get run rolled by Vanderbilt. But in the end,
01:54were able to earn a hosting spot in the postseason. And then as a few hours down the road, Vanderbilt,
02:00as the number one overall seed in the NCAA tournament, fell flat on their face. Tennessee,
02:06once again, raced right by the Commodores to win the Knoxville Regional and move on to Super Regionals.
02:13Now, I say this might be the best coaching job of the Tony Vitello era, and it's very easy to scoff at
02:18that. We don't even know if Tennessee is going to Omaha and they're coming off of a season where they
02:23just won a national championship. But I do know this, in college baseball, especially in recent
02:28memory, it is very difficult to sustain after winning a national title, maybe different to what
02:35it's like in college football or basketball, where teams that win a national title typically
02:40continue to be in that conversation in the years that follow. But in college baseball,
02:45there has not been a team to win a national championship and make Super Regionals the following
02:50year since 2018, when Florida did it and ended up getting to Omaha the year after winning the 2017
02:56national championship. So there's that, the ability to replace everything Tennessee lost
03:01through the MLB draft last year. Now, Tennessee is one of the more talented teams in the country,
03:06which is a credit to Tony Vitello. But to be able to pick them up out of their second half slump at
03:13the end of the regular season and not only host a regional, but now move on to the Supers,
03:17that is a massive feather in the cap of Tony Vitello. And yes, I believe he is the best coach
03:23on Tennessee's campus. You could argue about Rick Barnes and the totality of his career. He's one of
03:29the winningest active coaches in all of college basketball. Josh Heupel has revived Tennessee
03:34football from the depths and made the Vols relevant again. And if you're a Tennessee fan,
03:39you might value that more than you value a national championship in baseball. And that's perfectly fine.
03:44Many fans probably share that opinion. But if you're to take every sport in a vacuum and put
03:50every coach up next to what the standard is in that respective sport, there's no question.
03:55Tony Vitello is the best coach of his sport on Tennessee's campus. He's the only coach right now
04:02in a major sport that has a national championship under his belt. He's the only coach that year in and
04:08year out has Tennessee as a national championship contender, bonafide national championship contender.
04:14Men's basketball has certainly been in that conversation, but obviously hasn't gotten over
04:19that hump of getting to the first final four. So I feel perfectly comfortable saying that
04:23Tony Vitello is the best coach on Tennessee's campus. And there is this ultimate irony that
04:28Tony Vitello in Tennessee knocked off Wake Forest, a team whose athletic director is John Curry,
04:34the man who hired Tony Vitello at Tennessee, of course, before the Shiano Sunday fiasco. Hiring
04:40Tony V is the only good thing that John Curry did as the athletic director at Tennessee. And now his
04:46Wake Forest Demon Deacons are on the way out. Tennessee is on their way to the Super Regionals
04:51against an Arkansas team that knocked them off in the final regular season series. The good news for
04:55Tennessee is first games on Saturday. That gives an extra day of rest for Tennessee's pitching staff
05:00that gave everything over the course of the regional weekend. So Tony Vitello is going to
05:05try to keep this going. And right now, Tennessee's most dominant team on Rocky Top are the baseballs.