Best ever? Tennessee baseball can stake its claim in 2022 NCAA Tournament | Estes

On Sunday afternoon, hours before the SEC Tournament’s final game and a full day before the NCAA Tournament field was to be announced, a $100 bet on Tennessee’s baseball team to win the whole thing in Omaha could win you $260 via Fanduel.

Oregon State was next at $750. Every other team? At least $1,400.

Currently, Tennessee winning the College World Series (+260) is rated about as likely as the two-time reigning NHL champion Tampa Bay Lightning (+250) winning two more series to snag the Stanley Cup for the third time in a row. And more likely than the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, winners of 11 games last season, beating out three division rivals to take the NFC West (+310) in 2022. Not certain, these things, but certainly plausible.

Which has the Vols – with odds predating the 64-team field even being revealed – looking less a favorite and more like an impending reality in the NCAA Tournament.

Coach Tony Vitello's Tennessee won’t just be competing for the program’s first national championship.

It’ll be playing to be mentioned among the best teams in college baseball history.

This past week in Hoover only strengthened that view. The top-seeded Vols flexed muscles in the SEC Tournament, winning four games by a count of 35-10, including Sunday's 8-5 finale against Florida, played before a roaring backdrop of orange in the seats.

It looked relatively easy. Like this whole absurd season.

Good luck, everyone

For a Tennessee team so good, it’ll be NCAA title or bust. Sounds easy. It’s not. Everyone gets tested in this tournament.

A reminder, though: Assumptions haven't applied to this Tennessee team. It’s fair to question whether these Vols even belong in the same category as anyone else.

They are 53-7. They could be the first 60-win college baseball champion since the 1980s. The sport's past nine champs averaged 51.4 wins. Since 1995, no CWS winner has had fewer than 12 defeats.

Numbers like these can be useful for perspective, but in Tennessee’s case there’s no shortage of ridiculous statistics. After a while, it loses its shock value.

Tennessee leads the SEC – a difficult baseball league, last I checked – in (deep inhale): runs, hits, RBIs, doubles, triples, homers, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, earned-run average, opposing team’s batting average, strikeouts and runs allowed.

Nationally, it isn’t much different. The Vols entered this weekend with the most home runs and best slugging percentage in Division I baseball. They were second in runs. On the mound, their ERA of 2.37 led the nation by miles. The next best (Southern Miss) was 3.06. Next after that was 3.46.

“They're attacking. And they're attacking from all areas,” said Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin after Thursday’s 10-1 loss to Tennessee. “I'm not saying just offensively. They're attacking on the mound. They're attacking defensively, and they are attacking offensively.

“One of the better (SEC) teams that I've seen in the 20 years that I've been around, without question.”

Tennessee has the best hitting in college baseball.

It has the best pitching, too.

Put another way: Good luck, everyone else.

A complete team?

Great No. 1 overall seeds have flopped in the NCAA Tournament many times. Baseball isn't like football or some other spots. Upsets are rampant here. In 2021, Arkansas had it happen. Plenty of others before that.

To that end, Vitello’s gift has been the ability to keep making all this sound normal and natural when it’s not. He never outwardly acknowledges his team’s dominance.

“No one is going to have a complete team where they don’t feel like there’s any weaknesses,” Vitello said this week.

He’s correct, of course. It’s just that few – if any – college teams have ever threatened that truth as much as Tennessee is right now.

When Vitello doesn’t dwell on that part, it’s not just to keep expectations from sailing further into orbit. It’s part of the shtick. The Vols’ unwashed, new-money charm has been to sarcastically lean into the notion they still don’t belong at the head of the sport’s table.

The middle finger can be subtle. But it shows up from time to time.

Like when Vitello was asked Thursday night about going 4-for-4 this season against Corbin’s Vanderbilt.

“They are different than we are,” Vitello replied, “and that’s not a bad thing or a good thing. Coach (Dave) Van Horn at Arkansas has got his thing going on, and Sully (coach Kevin O'Sullivan) at Florida. … Everybody has kind of got their own flavor going on. I think what’s important is we kind of try to master ours as best as we can, and if we do that, I think it’ll be good enough that we’ll may be able to get this team in a certain year or compete with one of those kind of ‘top-notch’ programs.”

Vitello’s mention of Florida was the tell, in my opinion.

Do I think he said it because Van Horn in February specifically named Florida as a program that played baseball the right way when going in on “shenanigans” by unnamed teams? Did I think Van Horn was talking about Vitello’s fur-coat-wearing Vols? Do I think Vitello took it that way, too, and filed it away in his memory only to toss it out casually in Hoover?

Yes, yes and yes.

Tennessee went 4-for-4 against Florida this season, too, by the way.

“Coach V says that if you ever get out of the mentality of being on the hunt and wanting to attack, then you’ll get exposed,” UT senior Evan Russell aptly explained.

A season ago, Tennessee made it to Omaha, and the moment proved too big. Those Vols lost two games meekly and went home. Since then, they haven’t done anything meekly, playing with that hunter's “mentality” and brashness that has delighted their fans while mirroring their coach in many ways.

The fallacy, however, is that is the reason for Tennessee’s success.

Not anymore. The longer this goes, it has become clear that the Vols’ players are just that good. This no longer can be interpreted as a plucky, little underdog showing up to spoil college baseball’s stuffy country club.

The Vols are the big dogs now. They'll have the biggest target and the most pressure in the coming weeks, the result of a season in which nothing has yet disputed their credentials as the best team, perhaps of all time.

If so, we’re about to find out.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Best ever? Tennessee baseball can stake its claim in NCAA Tournament