Tennessee will open defense of its 2024 national championship Friday afternoon without the familiar pitching faces of Drew Beam, Zander Sechrist and Kirby Connell.
Liam Doyle, who played at Coastal Carolina in 2023 and at Ole Miss last season, will be the opening day starter as the Volunteers welcome Hofstra to Lindsey Nelson Stadium for a scheduled 4:30 first pitch. Marcus Phillips will get the ball for Saturday’s scheduled 4 p.m. start, but Tennessee eighth-year baseball coach Tony Vitello has yet to reveal the starter for Sunday’s noon finale.
“That’s kind of how we’ve done it except when Drew Beam stood out,” Vitello said earlier this week in a news conference. “He was a last-minute decision to start his freshman year on the Sunday of opening weekend, and he never relinquished that. Going into opening weekend with these pitch counts being the way they are, we want to have everyone available and focused on winning Friday, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the weekend.
“Having said that, you would like to give someone like Marcus the just due of preparing properly.”
Tennessee, which set a Southeastern Conference standard for total victories last season with its 60-13 record and became the NCAA tournament’s first top overall seed to win the national title since the 1999 Miami Hurricanes, begin this season ranked No. 2 behind Texas A&M in the USA Today coaches poll. The Vols defeated the Aggies last June in the CWS best-of-three title series.