In the minutes that followed Tennessee's triumph over Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference baseball tournament semifinals early Sunday morning, Volunteers coach Tony Vitello said he had not determined the starting pitcher for Sunday afternoon's championship game against Florida.
Then Vitello received a rather succinct text.
"I want the ball."
The text had come from former Cleveland High School ace Camden Sewell, who was given the opportunity and promptly excelled, working five scoreless innings to help stake the Vols to a 7-0 lead in an eventual 8-5 downing of the Gators before 13,270 fans in Hoover, Alabama. The victory gave top-ranked Tennessee (53-7) its first SEC tournament title since 1995, when the league had separate tournaments for its Eastern and Western divisions.
A combined tournament was implemented in 1996, so this would be Tennessee's first-ever title with teams from both divisions in the field.
"It was kind of cool," Vitello said early Sunday evening in a news conference. "We're fortunate in that we've got options and that we've also got guys who are saying, 'Give me the ball.' As a player, you're crazy to not at least ask, but the way he did it and knowing the kid, it was what he wanted to do.
"Now, I would be lying if I said the plan was for him to go out there and throw five innings."
Blade Tidwell, Chase Dollander, Drew Beam and Chase Burns already had been used as Tennessee tore through Vanderbilt, LSU and Kentucky by the combined score of 27-5, and the hard-throwing Ben Joyce certainly was an option, but Vitello had good reason to go with the 6-foot-4, 185-pound senior for his first start of the season. Sewell, after all, had thrown six scoreless innings against Florida in last year's SEC tournament - coincidentally on the same May 29 date - to pace the Vols to a 4-0 semifinal victory.
In fact, during four SEC tournament appearances the past two seasons, Sewell has worked 15 innings without allowing a run.
"It meant a lot," Sewell said. "I wanted it, to say the least, a lot. I didn't actually find out until this morning, so whenever I found out, it was like, 'All right, it's time to go.' I just enjoyed every minute of it."
Drew Gilbert, named tournament MVP, had the game's biggest swing of the bat with his bases-clearing double to deep left field on an 0-2 pitch with two out in the fifth that turned a shaky 1-0 lead into a comfortable 4-0 advantage over the Gators (39-22).
Evan Russell led off that inning by reaching on a two-base error and advanced to third on Blake Burke's single to right, and the Vols plated the game's first run on a Seth Stephenson bunt single down the third-base line. After Gilbert's heroics provided the four-run bulge, the Vols added to it in the sixth when Stephenson's RBI double past third base and a two-run double by Luc Lipcius to right-center made it 7-0.
Sewell picked up the victory to improve to 7-1 this season while lowering his earned run average to 2.62.
"The amount of plays the guys made today was really special to see," Sewell said. "There were a lot of plays I thought that were getting through to the outfield, but everyone was making plays. It was really awesome to be a part of."
Tennessee, which became the first school ever to win the SEC basketball and baseball tournaments in the same year, will be hosting an NCAA regional this week for a second straight season. Auburn, Florida and Texas A&M also earned host opportunities among league schools, and the entire 64-team field will be revealed Monday at noon.
The Vols joined LSU's 2010 team as the only to win an SEC tournament without ever trailing in an inning, a remarkable accomplishment for Tennessee given that its 5-2 victory over LSU ended Saturday morning at 2:12 Eastern and that its win over Kentucky ended Sunday morning at 1:47. That helps explain why Vitello praised the Hoover Met grounds crew right along with his coaches and players.
"We were on nightclub hours, basically, when we were playing," Vitello said, "and they got us through this thing, which was tremendous. This tournament did not disappoint, as always."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.