The final image of Tennessee’s 2023 baseball season will be the Volunteers failing to crack LSU’s 510 pounds of pitching — freshman Nate Ackenhausen and junior Riley Cooper — during Tuesday night’s 5-0 loss to the Tigers in a College World Series elimination game.
That is not what Vols coach Tony Vitello is choosing to remember.
“This thing is already over with and in my mind in the past,” Vitello said in a news conference moments after Tennessee’s season ended at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska. “The game I’ll choose to remember this team by was yesterday. It was the last great moment we had together, and it was also a game that was very representative of how the season went.
“We started out slow. There were a lot of struggles in there and a lot of frustration, but the guys overcame that and worked together make sure we had success. That’s what I’ll remember.”
Tennessee’s 6-4 triumph over Stanford on Monday afternoon transpired with the Vols scoring the final six runs and with Chase Burns pitching six scoreless innings of relief. It marked Tennessee’s first win in Omaha since 2001, thus providing a new target for Vols teams in the years ahead.
While the 2021 Vols ended a CWS drought that dated back to 2005 and while last year’s Vols soared to a 57-9 mark that included Southeastern Conference regular-season and tournament titles, this year’s team posted a 44-22 record despite easily experiencing more adversity than the past two seasons combined.
Tennessee began this season ranked No. 2 nationally even though the Vols had to replace every starting position player. The first couple of weeks contained losses to Arizona and to Grand Canyon, a three-game suspension for Vitello and an eight-game ineligibility sentence for transfer shortstop Maui Ahuna.
A 12-5 nonconference loss to Tennessee Tech on April 18 saddled the Vols with a 23-14 record that included a 5-10 mark in SEC play.
“The thing I’ll remember the most is probably the tough times we had and just the hills we had to climb,” sophomore pitcher Drew Beam said. “I mean, this season doesn’t just start in February. It starts back in August when we get on campus, and it’s a grind. You go through so much with your teammates and coaches, and you figure things out. If things don’t work, you figure out something else.
“Those trials and tribulations that were thrown at us that we had to fight through as the season went on are the things you remember, because you just push through it with the guys beside you and the coaches beside you. That’s the memorable part. The winning is great, but making the bond and making it a family is what you come out on top with.”
Tennessee provided its fans with multiple memorable moments during the second half of the season, from Griffin Merritt’s walk-off home run against Vanderbilt to Zane Denton’s three-run blast that erased a 4-2 ninth-inning deficit in an eventual 6-5 win in 14 innings at Clemson in the NCAA regional round to scoring the final eight runs of an 8-4 win while facing elimination at Southern Miss in the super regional.
The Vols could be moving forward with a lot of new pieces again next season, with players such as Merritt, right fielder Christian Scott and relief pitcher Camden Sewell out of eligibility and with Ahuna, starting pitcher Chase Dollander and left fielder Jared Dickey having been projected as top-100 selections in next month’s Major League Baseball draft.
They also will move forward with four prominent rising juniors — Beam, Burns, first baseman Blake Burke and second baseman Christian Moore — and as a popular destination for transfer talents given these past three seasons among the nation’s elite.
“You’ve got to learn how to deal with rankings and expectations,” Vitello said of the road ahead, “and then people start looking forward to playing you as opposed to maybe sleeping on you a little bit. We want our stadium to get bigger. We want our crowds to keep getting bigger and rowdier. We want our roster to be as competitive as anybody’s roster.
“Of course, that will come and go a little bit, but we want to be able to shoot for a national championship every year.”
Anderson commits
Tennessee landed its 14th football commitment for the 2024 signing cycle Wednesday afternoon, receiving a nonbinding pledge from offensive lineman Max Anderson of Frisco, Texas. The 6-foot-5, 309-pounder could play tackle or in the interior for the Vols, but the four-star prospect is listed as the nation’s No. 18 tackle and the No. 201 overall recruit in the 247Sports.com composite rankings.
Anderson visited Knoxville on June 9 and visited Oklahoma last weekend before picking the Vols over the Sooners.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.