The SEC tournament ended in the same way that the SEC baseball season ended. This was essentially the same way the SEC baseball season began. Tennessee volunteers, who chose to finish in the middle of the league before the season, continued their quest for Tony Wittero’s dominance, basically by going wire-to-wire at meetings and as the best team in the country. What’s left in Vols?How to echo Roger Dorn in a movie Major league baseball(Bleeping) just to win the whole thing.
It’s amazing that Tennessee’s mountaineering has taken place as quickly or completely as ever. Vitello has not participated in the College World Series since 2005 and inherited the Tennessee program, which created the NCAA tournament field only three times between 1997 and 2017 when Vitello was adopted. UT hasn’t won the SEC tournament since 1995 and was basically a retrofit in the league. After the end of the Rod Del Monico era in 2007, UT’s next two coaches both posted less than 500 career records in Knoxville.
Vols barely surpassed .500 in 2018, but in 2019 he won 40 games and joined the NCAA regional creator Vitello. After the 2020 season when COVID was shortened, Vitello led Vols to 50 wins and last season became the College World Series. This year, UT launched a season ranked five out of six major NCAA votes, all of which were 16th or lower. On March 28, in the midst of 23 consecutive victories, UT officially took first place in all six votes. Half of the votes dropped UT to second place after Vols (gasp) lost the weekend series, but by the following week, Vols was again at the top of all six votes. It was such a season.
The UT team hit .308, hit 141 home runs, and surpassed second-placed LSU by 90 runs in the overall scored run. Drew Gilbert’s .385 mark leads the SEC, and Tray Lipscomb’s 77 RBIs are at the top of the conference as well. Jorel Ortega or Luc Lipcius will each be the best batters on most SEC teams. However, pitching was expected to be an unstable location for the UT.
Not so many.
Vols’ 2.35ERA not only led the league, but also led more than 1.5 per game. UT’s 641 strikeouts were 57 times ahead of second-placed Vanderbilt. The opponent hit .193 against UT. Chase Lander’s 9 wins and 2.21 ERA are ahead of the league, but teammates Drew Beam and Chase Burns were second and third in the ERA SEC. Benjoyce’s smoke above 105 mph is unbelievable. UT is the best hitter and best pitching team in the country. And that’s how you go to 53-7, take first place for most of the year and dominate the SEC tournament.
The SEC final was a bizarre match, with UT breaking through a scoreless tie in 4 runs and 5 innings, highlighted with 2 strikes from Gilbert and a double base clear. The RBI pair doubled in the sixth inning, Lipsius tacked with two runs and extended the UT lead to 7-0. Florida trimmed the UT lead to 7-3 on the 8th and fell within 8-5 on the 9th, but Tyinglan did not reach the plate. Camden Seawell, UT’s fifth choice as a starting pitcher, locked out the Gators during the first five innings, but put the title on the bed.
The coronation was complete and official when the last flyball fell into the glove of left fielder Seth Stephenson. Tennessee spent the 2022 season head and shoulders on the SEC and, in fact, head and shoulders on college baseball.
From 23 consecutive wins to tournament titles (winning with a total of 35-10 scores), UT has fulfilled the promises it had had when Vitello was adopted in the summer of 2017.
Vols is a SEC baseball big dog. Maybe a big dog in college baseball.
There is only one hurdle left, from reaching the NCAA tournament to reaching Omaha and becoming a top sports team. Last year’s Arkansas team showed the inherent difficulty of winning the College World Series crown, even for the clear top teams in the sport. But if someone is preparing for the fight, it’s UT. Now that they have addressed all the previous challenges, it’s time to move on to the final biggest challenge.