No. 1 national seed Tennessee (56-12) defeated No. 8 seed Florida State (47-16), 12-11, on Friday at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Vols scored four runs in the ninth inning to advance to the College World Series winner’s bracket.
Seventh-year Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello recapped the contest.
“Obviously, both teams get a lot of credit for putting on a show for the fans,” Vitello said. “My understanding is the game prior to ours was like that, too, and that’s what this place is about, and it’s why we get the crowds that we do here. It’s why this sport has grown into what it is.
“There’s a lot that could be dissected in the game, so we’ll leave it up to your questions. Just the one thing that I haven’t shared with the team, but I’ll share with these guys is we hit BP early, and we had a lot of downtime in kind of a holding room, a makeshift locker room. As we were getting ready to go out in the dugout, I was looking around the room and had a sense of comfort, just because looking at the group of guys that we were about to go do battle with, felt pretty dang good about it. I think we knew we were going to do battle with a very offensive team.”
PHOTOS: Tennessee defeats Seminoles in College World Series
