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Tennessee baseball releases hype video ahead of SEC championship: ‘Smoke the Hogs’
By Keith Farner
Published:
Tennessee will take on Arkansas at 3 p.m. ET to decide the SEC championship from Hoover, Alabama on ESPN2.
It’s the first time since 1995 that Tennessee will play in the SEC Tournament championship game. This marks the first time in the tournament’s current format that the Vols have reached the final. UT won three consecutive tournament titles from 1993-95 when the eastern and western divisions had separate tournaments.
The recent story of the Vols has been pitching. After they recorded just one shutout all season, the Vols posted back-to-back shutouts to advance to Sunday’s title game.
Tennessee recorded just two shutout wins during its entire SEC Tournament history before this week. Coincidentally enough, the last two shutouts prior to this week occurred in consecutive games during the 1995 tournament (8-0 vs. South Carolina & 11-0 vs. Georgia).
In the hype video below, coach Tony Vitello summarizes the Vols’ season this way: “I’ve got news for everyone out there. The Vols aren’t coming anymore. The Vols are here, and they ain’t going anywhere!”
Vitello, of course, is a former Arkansas assistant, and got into a spirited exchange with Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn during their series earlier this month.
“Coach Van Horn is a mentor for me, and he’s also a gracious winner, and he just wanted to say good job, and I didn’t want to chat,” Vitello said, per Whole Hog Sports. “He was frustrated I didn’t, so he made a point to say it. That’s when I said something that really should be handled away from the field. So his reaction, I don’t think was out of line, and that’s what kind of stirred the attention.
“Then I said the hell with it, might as well try and sort it out here while the emotions are going, but that’s not a good idea because, again, there’s emotions going. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out we lost that game because they beat us. I worked under him and have learned a lot, and it’s not good to be an easy loser, and he’s not and I’m not, and that’s the end of it.”
The Vols are here to stay. Let’s go win ourselves a championship.#GBO 🍊 #OTH #Vols #SmokeTheHogs pic.twitter.com/6RjPXOFz3F
— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) May 30, 2021
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
