Comments from Tony Vitello suggest Tennessee baseball won't face one issue that it faced last season
Expectations were sky high for the Tennessee Vols baseball program last season after coming off one of the best college baseball regular seasons ever in 2022. Those expectations, however, were unfair. The 2023 Vols had plenty of talent, but it was essentially a brand new lineup after losing numerous key players, like Drew Gilbert and […]
Expectations were sky high for the Tennessee Vols baseball program last season after coming off one of the best college baseball regular seasons ever in 2022.
Those expectations, however, were unfair. The 2023 Vols had plenty of talent, but it was essentially a brand new lineup after losing numerous key players, like Drew Gilbert and Jordan Beck, among many others, to the MLB draft.
Tennessee got off to a rocky start last season in large part because it took the team a while to "gel" and find their groove.
The Vols eventually put it all together and they made it to Omaha before falling to LSU, the eventual College World Series champs.
Moving ahead to 2024, it feels like Tennessee will find their groove much quicker than they did a year ago. At least it sounds that way based on some recent comments that Vols head coach Tony Vitello made after UT's fall exhibition against Samford.
Vitello was asked if he likes where his team is right now compared to where they were at the start of fall practice.
And his answer indicated that this upcoming season's version of the Vols are "gelling" well together.
"I do. I think the honeymoon, for brevity sake, the honeymoon is over," said Vitello (via GoVols247). "We're past the point that these guys are coachable, they like to work, they're fun to be around, they're relaxed, there's very few headaches that arise. They seem to do a good job off the field, which we put a lot of emphasis on. We're kind of past that, so it's kind of a compliment in a backhanded way to the group that we already know that about them."
"They've proven it day in and day out," added Vitello. "So now as a coaching staff we're either able to or almost kind of forced to be nitpicky and start analyzing some other areas. And now that we've been harsher critics of the group, there's definitely some areas we need to get better at if we're going to have success in the spring. And the good thing is we have time to do that."
Tennessee lost some elite talent to the draft from last year's team, including starting pitcher Chase Dollander and starting shortstop Maui Ahuna, but they didn't lose as much talent as the 2022 team lost. And after hearing Vitello's comments this week, it feels like the 2024 team is going to be in a much better spot (chemistry wise) when the season starts than last year's team was.
We might be right in the middle of football season, but baseball season will be here before you know it.
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