The Vols have advanced to the Knoxville Regional championship game Sunday against the winner between Georgia Tech and Campbell.
Following the Vols’ win against Campbell, Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello met with media and discussed the game.
“If you were fortunate enough to have a ticket tonight, you got your money’s worth,” Vitello said. “That was a fight, and that was an NCAA Regional game, but that was like a championship-feel game from both squads. You can start with the two starting pitchers. Look at the box score, it’s not right. Starting with Do (Chase Dollander), we’re not in this situation without him. If you can hold down their lineup at any moment, you did well. He did it for the first two innings.
“Things unfolded in unfortunate fashion. He wasn’t going to be the same guy with that high pitch count, so we went and got him. Hopefully that answers another question. It opened up an opportunity—like we talked about with Chuck (Charlie Taylor) — for Kirby (Connell). The guys have each other’s backs, and then (Cade Kuehler), that box score doesn’t do him justice. I hope he can sleep well tonight. That was some freakish stuff. I don’t know how the box score reads what it does, but he pitched with a lot of heart. Neither one of those guys were scared, or blamed anybody, or did anything that you should be ashamed of. We were fortunate, maybe because we are playing at home, or Cortland Lawson is a competitor. I don’t know. We were just fortunate to win that thing.”
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