It’s no surprise that Tony Vitello led his powerful Tennessee Volunteers team to the SEC Tournament title game in Hoover. Perhaps more surprising is their opponent, the LSU Tigers.
It was a slow start to the season for the Tigers. However, in the month of May no team has been hotter. Just ahead of first pitch, Vitello explained the team’s mindset facing a hot LSU team on the big stage to the SEC Network broadcast.
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“They are the hottest team,” Tony Vitello said. “I think just to play good baseball. Kudos to them for surviving yesterday’s chaos, and it’ll be chaotic today all across the country because teams have been where they’ve been in the hotel and you’re running low on pitching and everyone wants to do real well, but I think the biggest thing is just to play good baseball, and I think that’ll take care of itself on our end. We can’t really control what they’re doing but I’m willing to bet they’re gonna continue for a while playing as well as they are.”
To counter that incredibly talented and hot LSU lineup, Tony Vitello is sending AJ Russell to the mound. A talented pitcher, Russell has been dealing with injuries this season, which Vitello also addressed.
“He felt good. Normal soreness the next day. Then, yesterday he was caught in between. I think his body was saying no and his mind was saying I wanna go,” Vitello said. “We didn’t want to mess with that at all. So, we just kind of pushed it to today and fortunately we made it and he feels good. He’s probably gonna want to go longer than we let him go, though.”
The reality for Tony Vitello and Tennessee is that pitching is important but they wouldn’t be here without their offense. That, notably, includes Christian Moore.
“You don’t have a lot of worries because he kind of coaches himself in the box. He’s very reminiscent of Andre Lipcius, a kid we had when he first inherited the job where he’s off in the dugout thinking his way through the game and then in the box he’s thinking his way through it too,” Vitello said. “If you’re just in the stands, you can see how physical he is and you probably just label him as an athlete, but really what he is is a puzzle solver and it’s a pretty good combination with how physical he is.”
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