Went up there with my now wife, then fiancé.
That was the worst of Scott Stricklin's teams.... that heralded freshman class that we'd heard so much about leading up to 2017 was predicably having a hard time competing in the SEC. Or competing generally. Earlier in that season we accomplished the rare feat of losing to College of Charleston in baseball by a larger margin than our basketball team lost to Kentucky later that same day. We'd scored four runs over an entire weekend against UAB, split a mid-week series with Xavier, and were beaten soundly at home twice by Rider (on a weekend I was in Las Vegas for my bachelor party). We opened league play the following weekend by being very predictably swept at LSU. We managed to get a game from Auburn the next weekend, and rolled into Knoxville at 1-5 in the conference.
Tennessee was a dormant of a program as you could imagine in 2017. Todd Raleigh, who'd gotten fired after 2011, had done some serious damage to their program over his relatively brief tenure there. They hired Dave Cerrano in 2012, and Cerrano had a very strong resume and seemed to have a good plan. I really thought that it was going to work out for him. But, it never did. They just never had the pitching or the defense to seriously compete. Cerrano could sign some hitters and that always made Tennessee relatively dangerous, but it seemed like they were perpetually 12-18 during that 2012 - 2017 Cerrano tenure.
2017 was my fourth trip to Knoxville, having gone to each series since 2011. Tennessee was never much during any of those four weekends, and the fan support was practically non-existent. We only played one game in 2013 because of rain, but I remember there being a bit more interest that year. But 2011 and 2015 were pretty dead atmospheres. And in my recollection, it bottomed out in 2017. As I said, we showed up at 1-5. Tennessee showed up at 0-6. Friday night was a bitterly cold once the sun went down, which happened relatively early in the game - the temps were probably in the low 40s by the end, but it was windy and damp after being overcast all day. It felt like there were a few hundred people at the stadium there.
Tennessee pretty much dominated the game as I recall, until we made a push in the 9th inning. We strung several hits together, scored some runs, and it really felt like we were about to take the lead. We were down to our last out, down by 1, and I think that we had the bases loaded. I remember we sent up Tucker Bradley as a pinch hitter. I told my now-wife that "well, the game is going to end here. This guy hasn't picked up an RBI this entire season." And, the game ended there (Bradley went on to enjoy a much stronger career than his first two months of 2017 would have suggested). We went and had a terrific dinner at Chesapeake's.
The next day was the opposite weather wise. Bright sun, the temps got into the 70s, but it felt much hotter. I'm pretty sure I ended up with a sun burn. We won that afternoon in front of a larger crowd, no doubt driven there by the weather... we got down early but came storming back in the late innings and picked up the W. Then in a bit of a surprise, managed to win on Sunday to win the series.
So we left Knoxville at 3-6 and Tennessee was 1-8. Charitably speaking, it was two struggling teams that had been struggling for awhile, and there was no real reason to believe that the remainder of the season would be good to either group.
Their program obviously changed a lot since then. Ours did too, as we were a national seed in both 2018 and 2019. But it's night and day from what they were. Really, from 2011 - 2017, it's not like Tennessee was ever a good team, "knocking on the door" or anything like that. They were a bad team that their fans didn't care much about. That was only seven years ago our 2017 teams met.
I think that Vitello blew up a lot of the stuff that we were asked to believe about how long it takes to turn a program around. And it's a different landscape now anyway, but it was a very similar "night-and-day" difference that we saw from 2023 to 2024.
Anyway, I thought of that 2017 series in Knoxville earlier today and it's just hard to believe that these are our respective programs, seven years later.
That was the worst of Scott Stricklin's teams.... that heralded freshman class that we'd heard so much about leading up to 2017 was predicably having a hard time competing in the SEC. Or competing generally. Earlier in that season we accomplished the rare feat of losing to College of Charleston in baseball by a larger margin than our basketball team lost to Kentucky later that same day. We'd scored four runs over an entire weekend against UAB, split a mid-week series with Xavier, and were beaten soundly at home twice by Rider (on a weekend I was in Las Vegas for my bachelor party). We opened league play the following weekend by being very predictably swept at LSU. We managed to get a game from Auburn the next weekend, and rolled into Knoxville at 1-5 in the conference.
Tennessee was a dormant of a program as you could imagine in 2017. Todd Raleigh, who'd gotten fired after 2011, had done some serious damage to their program over his relatively brief tenure there. They hired Dave Cerrano in 2012, and Cerrano had a very strong resume and seemed to have a good plan. I really thought that it was going to work out for him. But, it never did. They just never had the pitching or the defense to seriously compete. Cerrano could sign some hitters and that always made Tennessee relatively dangerous, but it seemed like they were perpetually 12-18 during that 2012 - 2017 Cerrano tenure.
2017 was my fourth trip to Knoxville, having gone to each series since 2011. Tennessee was never much during any of those four weekends, and the fan support was practically non-existent. We only played one game in 2013 because of rain, but I remember there being a bit more interest that year. But 2011 and 2015 were pretty dead atmospheres. And in my recollection, it bottomed out in 2017. As I said, we showed up at 1-5. Tennessee showed up at 0-6. Friday night was a bitterly cold once the sun went down, which happened relatively early in the game - the temps were probably in the low 40s by the end, but it was windy and damp after being overcast all day. It felt like there were a few hundred people at the stadium there.
Tennessee pretty much dominated the game as I recall, until we made a push in the 9th inning. We strung several hits together, scored some runs, and it really felt like we were about to take the lead. We were down to our last out, down by 1, and I think that we had the bases loaded. I remember we sent up Tucker Bradley as a pinch hitter. I told my now-wife that "well, the game is going to end here. This guy hasn't picked up an RBI this entire season." And, the game ended there (Bradley went on to enjoy a much stronger career than his first two months of 2017 would have suggested). We went and had a terrific dinner at Chesapeake's.
The next day was the opposite weather wise. Bright sun, the temps got into the 70s, but it felt much hotter. I'm pretty sure I ended up with a sun burn. We won that afternoon in front of a larger crowd, no doubt driven there by the weather... we got down early but came storming back in the late innings and picked up the W. Then in a bit of a surprise, managed to win on Sunday to win the series.
So we left Knoxville at 3-6 and Tennessee was 1-8. Charitably speaking, it was two struggling teams that had been struggling for awhile, and there was no real reason to believe that the remainder of the season would be good to either group.
Their program obviously changed a lot since then. Ours did too, as we were a national seed in both 2018 and 2019. But it's night and day from what they were. Really, from 2011 - 2017, it's not like Tennessee was ever a good team, "knocking on the door" or anything like that. They were a bad team that their fans didn't care much about. That was only seven years ago our 2017 teams met.
I think that Vitello blew up a lot of the stuff that we were asked to believe about how long it takes to turn a program around. And it's a different landscape now anyway, but it was a very similar "night-and-day" difference that we saw from 2023 to 2024.
Anyway, I thought of that 2017 series in Knoxville earlier today and it's just hard to believe that these are our respective programs, seven years later.
