Tennessee is set to open SEC play this weekend within its friendly confines of Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
It’ll be the first time in Tony Vitello’s five years as head coach that the Vols open conference play in Knoxville. All it took to make it happen was mentioning it to someone in the league office.
“I mentioned something to somebody in the league and I wasn’t treated rudely or anything, but it was like ‘who cares?’ or ‘that’s not anything,’” Vitello explained to the media this week. “But it’s a really big deal.
“If you gave a team 18 home games and 12 road games in this league, with the way this league is a battle and it’s tough to win every place on the road, they would have success consistently year in and year out. When Friday starts for any team around the league, regardless of where the game is played, each team has a 50/50 chance of winning, but you certainly would like to be in your own backyard and we’re going to do that for the first time in a long time.”
The Vols appear to be entering SEC play as well-positioned as they could be.
Sure, they’re a consensus top 10 team and their only loss is to the No. 1 team in the country, but Vitello and his staff have a feel for what they can expect from the players each game out. To have that feeling entering SEC play is a coach’s dream.
“We have the questions you want answered up until this point,” Vitello said. “Maybe if you win the National Championship you don’t have questions, but if you lose the National Championship game, you probably said ‘we should have used this guy’ or ‘maybe we wore this guy down.’ So there’s always questions as a coaching staff you’re looking to have resolved.
“Going into this weekend, I think at this point, we kind of know who a lot of our starters are, who are starting pitchers are on the mound and the bullpen thing is kind of sorted out. There’s almost no chance that all those things will stay in place, but it’s kind of nice that these kids have brought a level of consistency to the point where we know what we’re getting out of them.”
No. 7 Tennessee (16-1) begins SEC play against SEC East foe South Carolina (10-6). Coincidentally, the Gamecocks are coming off a series win over Texas, the only team that has knocked off the Vols this season.
South Carolina lost last Saturday to the Longhorns, but bounced back with a doubleheader sweep on Sunday to take the series.
“Because of their game times (against Texas), they played late into Sunday and we finished early, we saw a couple of innings of that deal,” Vitello said. “To me it’s pretty easy — they beat the No. 1 team in the country. Everyone knows it’s tough to win in Columbia, South Carolina, but baseball is baseball and we’ve seen Texas up close. They’re talented, well-coached and experienced. South Carolina is capable of beating anybody in the country. But also with the way our kids have played too, they’re capable of great things. It’s just a matter of going out and playing ball and we get to do it at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.”
The Gamecocks had lost five straight prior to their doubleheader sweep of Texas. They were swept the weekend before by arch-rival Clemson and then lost to Xavier 15-7 in their lone midweek game.
“We’re going to be really excited this weekend,” Vols third baseman Trey Lipscomb said. “We’ll get our scouting report, we’ll look it over, see what we need to do as a team and go from there. But just going to treat it like any other game and play the game we’ve always played.”
Game one on Friday night is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET. Game two on Saturday will begin at 12 p.m. ET, while the series finale on Sunday is slated to start at 1 p.m. ET, respectively.
