No. 1 overall seed Tennessee (53-11) advanced to a NCAA Tournament Knoxville Super Regional after defeating No. 2 seed Southern Miss (43-20), 12-3, on Sunday at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
The Vols will next host the winner between East Carolina and Evansville in the Greenville Regional.
“Congrats to our players,” Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello said. “They worked hard. Also, congrats to everybody that was a part of our regional tournament. There were some gritty efforts from a young team we just played, a team we played last night that had a lot of injuries and then a team that’s probably doubted by many, for various reasons, in Northern Kentucky. It won’t be their last regional anytime soon. We’re very appreciative of the fact that we were able to survive or win the tournament.
“The first thing with this game tonight, we deserve a shout out to Vamos Vols. Those who were at the game know why. Our guys in the dugout know that, but overall all the fans were outstanding. Every time I get critical when I’m kind of watching, like I don’t know why our guys have to clap their hands for Billy in the dugout, but every fan should. Why isn’t everybody doing that? Well, everybody’s doing it tonight and other little adjustments. It’s just fun to see, like I said last night, the whole thing evolve. And it certainly helps our efforts and makes it an advantage to play at home. The game started out to me with a little extra tension, which was very frustrating, and I probably added to it, which detracted from our play, but we were also seeing a good arm. We recruited that kid. We liked that kid a lot out of high school in (JB) Middleton. He’s improved, and he’s certainly well coached. So, it’s not like things were easy, but there was a little tension there interfering. I know the next thing they score, but whatever happened there was Zander (Sechrist) seemed to kind of flip the script a little bit. Everybody decided if this guy’s going to get hit with a line missile and stay out here and compete and also be willing to kind of have that Zander smile like he always does, then we should probably relax a little bit, but also compete the way that he is. Again, I think it flipped a little bit. Then, we give the ball off to (Nate) Snead. Neither of those two guys are the ones that are in here, but they very easily could be. They did an outstanding job and made it easier on our offense tonight.”
PHOTOS: Tennessee baseball defeats Southern Miss, wins Knoxville Regional
