Tennessee baseball head coach Tony Vitello met with the media in Oxford following an 8-5 series-evening loss to Ole Miss at Swayze Field.
Vitello shared his thoughts on the loss, including what he saw from Marcus Phillips’ subpar outing, the lack of situational hitting from the offense, what led to Ole Miss stealing eight bases and more.
See everything Vitello said after the loss below.
On what went wrong in the game:
“We didn’t play that well. Base running really wasn’t a factor but if you go off of offense, defense and pitching – there wasn’t any of those three areas where we were even close to being as good as we could be. You have got to give credit to the opponent, at least on the swings they took and the pitches they made. In all three of those phases of the game, if you will, it just wasn’t our best. It was a back-and-forth battle, which is what you’d expect. Just not as clean of a game or maybe not as much drama to it as last night. Same thing. Back-and-forth battle and when that happens, you’ve got to play as well as you can in each of those phases.”
On Ole Miss stealing eight bases:
“I think just with Marcus [Phillips], that was the matchup. They were aggressive in situations. They were aggressive on a bunt play that ended up working out for them. So, an adjustment there between now and next week, but I don’t think a big adjustment [is necessary] between now and tomorrow.”
More From RTI: WATCH: Tony Vitello Reacts to Series-Evening Loss at Ole Miss
On what he saw from Marcus Phillips’ command issues and his outing as a whole:
“Last night was so emotional. Maybe he came out and tried to do too much and replicate what Liam (Doyle) was doing rather than just be himself, but that’s an on-the-spot, dramatic theory. The only reason I say that is because once he was a little tamed down, the velo was down and he didn’t have as much gas in the tank, he just kind of pitched and put together his best inning, which was the third inning. And then the fourth inning because, similar to last week, we’re in game two, we feel like we have a full bullpen, and the game was in balance already pretty early – runs were at a premium if you will – we decided to go to the bullpen.”
On if having no hits with runners in-scoring position was just ‘baseball being baseball’:
“No, I think there needs to be better at-bats. And they emptied the tank. And they’ve got a bunch of good arms that they use, and not one of them is a weak spot for them. Again, they made pitches and threw a bunch of different looks out there, but we didn’t put very good swings on pitches at opportune times. It’ll be something [that we] will be motivated to do better tomorrow.”
