Tennessee baseball started conference play with a bang on Friday night, knocking off Alabama 11-3 at Thomas-Sewell Stadium in Tuscaloosa.
AJ Causey was fantastic in a 6.2 inning start while Dylan Dreiling, Blake Burke and Kavares Tears all went deep in the win.
Following the win, Tennessee coach Tony Vitello discussed Causey’s strong outing, what went well for the offense and more. Here’s everything Vitello said.
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On AJ Causey’s performance, bouncing back from two-run first inning
“Yeah, he was tremendous. Part of what happened there is he’s throwing strikes to a good team so I don’t know if it’s cost of doing business or just something that can happen at some point. He really fielded his positions well tonight. He had good presence. He reacted to a little bit of adversity well and overall just kind of seemed like he was getting better as the game was getting going. I don’t know if we had to take him out in that situation but this early in the conference season you’d like to be a little bit sure or careful with the pitch count.”
On his evaluation of the offense
“Obviously you get some highlights on both sides with both teams hitting some impressive homers but some of the best at-bats we had were the ones where there wasn’t a Sportscenter type play or action that took place. It was forcing the starter (Ben) Hess to throw a lot of pitches early in the game or battling with two strikes or Burke just fists one into left field in a difficult situation. To me, a little bit of extra toughness out of some of those at-bats went a long way tonight.”
On Dylan Dreiling’s start flying under the radar
“The good thing about Dylan is he’s incredibly selfless and we’ve kind of moved him into a bunch of different spots in the lineup, wherever we feel he’s best suited that particular day. But to be honest with you, dating back to his high school days, he’s best suited just to be in the lineup. He’s a natural hitter. He’s turned himself into a really physical kid with adding a lot of strength working with Coach Q(uentin Eberhardt) and kind of seems to be a guy that’s very stoic all the time but internally seems to be better when moments are a little bigger or maybe there’s more intensity. I don’t know if you’d call it clutch or what. I know he really enjoys being in there when the game’s on the line in the batter’s box.”
On Andrew Behnke and Aaron Combs out of the bullpen
“They did what they needed to do. Basically hold down, again, a pretty physical and talented offense that has a lot of experience. To not let a fire get started was huge because you don’t want to have to end up using three or four guys and you certainly don’t want to give a team momentum going into the next day. I don’t know if that necessarily exists but both guys did what they needed to do for us and got back into SEC play.”
