Another college baseball season concluded Monday with a team from the Southeastern Conference — not named Arkansas — hoisting the national championship trophy at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska.
This time, it was the Tony Vitello-led Tennessee Volunteers who proved to be the best team in college baseball virtually all season long. With a 6-5 victory over fellow SEC foe Texas A&M in Game 3 of the College World Series finals, the Vols became the first No. 1 overall seed to win the title since Miami did so in 1999.
Prior to his time spent making an impressive turnaround of Tennessee's program in Knoxville, Vitello was an assistant at Arkansas under long-time head coach Dave Van Horn for four seasons from 2014-17.
Vitello coached 22 Razorbacks that were selected in the Major League Baseball draft, including names such as Andrew Benintendi, Dominic Fletcher, Grant Koch, Jax Biggers and even Bobby Wernes, who is now an assistant coach with the Diamond Hogs.
Not long after reaching the peak of college baseball late Monday evening, Vitello made it a point of emphasis to credit his time in Fayetteville.
"I did it as an assistant at Arkansas, because coach Van Horn gave me that opportunity and also helped lead me along the way," Vitello said. "I think some of them appreciate I hustled around down there. Most of them hate me, which is fine.
"What they need to realize is their program definitely had a hand in what happened tonight, there's no question about that. I'm thankful for my personal opportunity. Guys like Zander (Sechrist) and Dylan (Dreiling) are benefactors of who I think is the best coach in the country, and coach Van Horn is who I’m talking about."
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Vitello took the head coach job at Tennessee in 2018, and the Volunteers have most recently made it to the College World Series in two of the last three seasons.
"Tennessee came calling, and I knew a little bit about it," Vitello said. "I knew it had those ingredients, but I've been blown away at how friendly everybody is and how involved everybody is. Loyalty is a very important word to everybody, but especially to an Italian fella. I don't know that there is a more loyal fanbase, and really just community, when you're in that state."
Earlier on in his postgame press conference, Vitello also credited Arkansas as having one of the best fanbases in the SEC.
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"When we first came to Knoxville, we came from Arkansas — arguably the best fans in the league," Vitello said. "Best stadium. Huge crowds. Winning tradition."
The Vols' head coach also went on to list other SEC powerhouse programs such as Florida, Vanderbilt, LSU, Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
Four of those five programs won each of the previous four national titles prior to Tennessee's win Monday, and Florida also won it in 2017. Aside from the 2020 season that was cancelled due to Covid-19, the only year since 2017 without an SEC national champion was Oregon State's win over Arkansas in 2018.
The competition in the league only gets tougher with Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC next season. Following back-to-back exits in the Fayetteville Regional the past two seasons, Van Horn and the Razorbacks will be looking to become the next SEC national champion sooner rather than later.
Click here to keep up with all of Arkansas' offseason roster movement as Van Horn and his staff look to build a championship-caliber team for 2025.
