Josh Elander is trying to set the right tone to begin his first season as Tennessee baseball coach, as he takes over for Tony Vitello, who left Knoxville to be the San Francisco Giants manager.
Elander knows there’s a standard to live up to, both with Vitello, who led the Volunteers to a national championship in 2024, and with the program in general. But Tennessee didn’t live up to that standard this past weekend, and Elander knows it. That’s why on Sunday, after the Vols suffered their first regular-season series loss to a nonconference opponent since 2020, doing it at home no less against Kent State, he had sharp words for his team.
Tennessee lost Sunday’s series finale 9-5 on the heels of Saturday’s 2-1 setback, which made Friday’s 4-3 victory in the series opener a distant memory by the time the Volunteers walked off their home field. Everything was going fine for the 15th-ranked Vols after that Friday win that improved them to 5-0 on the young season. But things went sour the past 2 days, and suddenly there’s a home series loss to a MAC program to stew over for the next few days.
Elander, an assistant at Tennessee since 2018, unloaded after Sunday’s sloppy loss, which featured 2 errors by the Vols while Tennessee pitchers walked 7 batters, hit 4 more batters and threw a costly wild pitch. Kent State, which left the field in Knoxville with the same 5-2 record as the Volunteers, also scored 4 of its runs with 2 outs.
“There was a lot. I think the most frustrating thing is just losing back-to-back games on our home field. That’s not acceptable,” Elander told reporters in the postgame press conference. “Our guys know that, and a lot of decisions I made (Sunday) were not good, so clearly my fault from the jump. But our guys know we have to be better.”
His players got a specific message from Elander afterwards.
“On your home field on Sunday — I think the theme is very similar. You can talk about doing it or you can actually do it,” Elander told reporters. “So, this is our first challenge. Internally, how do the guys handle it? Do they link up to the guy next to them, or do they start pointing fingers or asking questions?
“I feel really confident about the clubhouse, and we’ve got some other guys coming back here pretty soon. The competition, how we handle some adversity, will ultimately define how we do as a group. So, this is our first test right here.”
That test begins on Tuesday afternoon on the same field in Knoxville, where Tennessee will host Bellarmine, as it looks to put a forgettable weekend in the rear-view mirror.
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