Tennessee-Arkansas series will be full of intensity but also respect

Saturday afternoon, the marquee matchup in the college baseball super regionals gets cranked up as Tennessee plays at Arkansas. 

The Razorbacks and the Vols have been two of the best teams in college baseball thanks to the leadership of two hyper competitive head coaches in Arkansas’ Dave Van Horn and Tennessee’s Tony Vitello.

Vitello is beyond familiar with Arkansas, helping build the program with Van Horn as an assistant coach from 2014-2017 before taking the Tennessee job. Vitello credits Van Horn for the opportunity to learn the SEC and learn from his former boss. Tennessee’s head man also notes that while there’s similarities between the two programs, the two also do things differently. 

“I remember getting here, and collectively as a staff we had success recruiting at Arkansas, and the stadium helped and all that,” Vitello said. “But people here were like ‘just do what you did at Arkansas’. They’re winning some games. And it’s a total different place. Same league, state university, flagship school and all that. But Knoxville is different, and baseball in our state’s different, and the way we want to do some things here is a little bit different.

“I learned a lot from coach Van Horn. There’s certainly, when you bring Frank on board, he brings his deal and Q (Quentin Eberhardt) is definitely, I feel a unique X-factor for us. But there’s some things that I learned there that I would have never known or never would have experienced without his first believing in me and then help. So, there’s some similarities, or a bridge there, a little bit. And then we didn’t know that it would become here, with our fan base is what I’m getting at. And I was a little concerned on whether we could sustain success here, because in our league, you have to have a true home field advantage. And they’ve had it for decades, and really, I guess after COVID, even kind of during, in ‘21 especially— we had the comforting feeling that this is one of the rowdiest places to play as well. So, there’s two similarities, and maybe there’s more.”

Another similarity is the competitiveness and pride of the two programs. That showed up in a postgame argument between Vitello and Van Horn in 2021 and there’s plenty when it comes to roster assembly. 

Because of that brush up and because of other things said or implied, the feeling by many is that the skippers don’t care for each other, which is not the case. In fact, Van Horn was one of the first coaches to call Vitello last year after the Vols won the national title.

“From my side, it got kind of emotional. But he was very generous with some of his compliments and was appreciative of some things and I was too,” Vitello said of that phone call. “So, you know, guys, especially when you’re in uniform. I think people don’t understand, especially our sport, because the coaches wear a uniform, too. These are like costumes, and it’s like recess out there. So, there’s wild stuff that go on. And then, having said that too, when your teammates with somebody you know, guys a lot of times aren’t good at showing you appreciation or how they feel about one another.

“We had an argument in the past. I quickly said to a lot of people, first of all, [that] should have been handle without the public eye seeing. But you don’t have an argument with somebody like that you meet on the street. There’s a lot of memories there. And all I did there was trying to work my butt off. I was still young and probably a little foolish. I was in the car a lot. For the first time, I had a guy that we really synced up well. On the recruiting front, it was a good one-two punch.”

Van Horn said the call was simply to offer a tip of the cap to is former assistant. 

“I just congratulated him. I’m happy for him. And, you know, just proud of him. And happy for Josh (Elander) and all the guys that we knew that were involved in that program. And, you know, he thanked me a lot. There was a lot of that,” Van Horn recalled. 

Saturday afternoon, the two programs and two coaches who have plenty of respect for each other will square off in a three-game series for a trip to the College World Series. 

And while there’s respect, there’s probably no need to look for a lot of kumbaya moments.