College World Series: Everything Link Jarrett, pair of FSU players had to say before facing Tennessee

Q. Does your sense of familiarity and the staff’s sense of familiarity with this place help you guys in any way when you show up here and have a little bit of a game plan when you show up to Omaha?

TONY VITELLO: I think so. You know, all of us want to look at the itinerary and make it as productive for our guys as possible and try and put the guys in a position to succeed. But at some point the umpire is going to yell out, “Play ball,” and then it’s going to turn into warfare, whatever cliche you want to throw out there, and you’re going to see nothing but good players.

It helps. There are teams that have come here their first time and done well, and there are teams that maybe had a less talented roster but done better because, you know, that experience.

I think it helps in a lot of different ways that are away from the field, but again, once the game starts, you just have to play ball. And how much of a factor all those items have, I don’t know which time you enjoy it more, your first or second. Now you know downtime, how it works out, how you’re going to mix in family time and things like that. I don’t know how much it benefits when the game or competition starts, but it certainly all comes a little smoother I think as you experience it.

Q. Six top 100 prospects alone, a lot more talent on your team beyond that. With that much talent, it’s not a given that you can make it work in one room, but you guys seem to have done that. No. 1 seed here at CWS. How have you been able to make that work so effectively this season with so many high-profile guys?

TONY VITELLO: Well, I think some of those guys have put themselves into that position, whereas maybe they weren’t there a year ago or earlier in the year.

So it kind of starts with that, when your best or most talented players are pushing themselves to get more physical or to get better mentality-wise or mature and elevate their status as an individual, the team gets better. With this group in particular, I can’t take any credit for, like, making the personalities work.

I’m from St. Louis. Joe Torre goes from there to the Yankees, and it’s a little better roster, and it really becomes about managing egos and when to tell Marino Rivera to go in the game.

With this, I can’t even say I’ve done any of that. These guys took ownership of that locker room in August, the most or quickest I’ve ever seen a freshman class merge with the older guys, and then the older guys have been about as willing as any group I’ve been around for leadership: Tell me where you want me to play, when you want me to pitch, how you want me to do this, and I’ll go do it.

It’s been a unique group, and it’s made work fun.

Q. Could you just kind of weigh in on what I was talking about earlier about how difficult it obviously is to get here and then obviously the 1999 thing is kind of ridiculous.

TONY VITELLO: Sure, it’s a number. First of all, it’s difficult to get here, and once you are here, it’s even more difficult to win. Part of that is the talent that’s here.

So the seeding to me kind of evaporates. It’s valuable in the first round because if you line up those four teams, the 1 seed is normally going to get the team that maybe is not as potent as the others. But once you get here, there aren’t really any underdogs or anything like that.

I talk with Sully throughout the year, and they have a team like we had last year. There’s plenty of talent, but they kind of had to go through figure out what combination works and overcome some things, and kudos to them for making it here.

All you have to do is stand next to Cags for two seconds, and there’s no more underdogs. They had to go on the road again like we did last year. Anybody can beat anybody. Everybody knows that. Then you mentioned the numbers, whether it’s 1999 or just numbers game in general, it really is a numbers game.

Now there’s a championship series. There wasn’t one when I was younger. Really the only four teams that matter are us and the three that we’re in that group with. Out of four teams, one of them has to come out.

Just like those other three teams, right now our guys are saying, well, why not us? One out of four. Regardless of who is ranked or slotted where. Then Hunter brought it up. He listed off I think a social media thing I’ve never even heard of. And I’m not on Twitter. I mess around with Instagram a little bit. You said 1999. If you jump on the Google machine, you’ll see that’s right about when social media started and then it picked up steam.

I don’t think those two things are coincidence. We’ve dealt with it this year. We knew some things were coming when the NCAA committee — not that there’s any conspiracies or anything out there, but there was a couple of things that were going to happen with that bracket. Everybody predicted that in January.

So our guys had to battle not only the teams that we were playing against, but some of those underlying storylines that were available in our regional and other spots like that and how you confront those storylines and those labels that people give, whether it’s your seed or this can happen or can’t happen.

That now is part of competition for young kids. Where they’re ranked by perfect game in high school, it’s part of competition, so our guys need to compete against the right things and they need to choose what those right things are. Again, when we play Florida State, they’re one of four teams, but they’re the only one that matters on Friday, and they are very, very good.

Q. Tony, last year you kind of talked about the building blocks of your program and what that’s looked like. What did you learn here last year? What are the biggest take-aways there? What’s kind of been the story of this team?

TONY VITELLO: Sure. Last year was we faced Skenes right out of the gate, and he is obviously outstanding.

We competed the whole game, and fortunately, just get him out of the game. It was pretty late, though.

Then the bounceback feeling was what I really liked. We play Stanford. Incredibly talented. Yet, you had a little extra determination in there from the loss.

I don’t think we were true to ourselves in that last game. Maybe we just got beat, but it was reminiscent of ’21 when we got here. Our guys — if you interview any of them and there’s very competitive guys in that ’21 group, we just were not true to ourselves.

Again, when we show up on Friday, we could either win or we could lose, but I would prefer when we get back on the bus to go back to the hotel, we won or lost as the 2024 Vols. By now it’s deep enough into the season you guys can look from afar or our fans can make comments, but we know what that looks like and feels like.

I was looking for a Christmas present. I’m not a father. If I was looking for a Father’s Day present, it would be just to be ourselves. That ties into your other question of what’s this team look like or been. It’s, again — I just have to fall on the team chemistry thing.

Not up here with a bunch of Rudy’s or guys that played like I did skill-wise. There’s plenty of skill in that locker room, but again, just the vibe has been a good party during stretch. And then in pregame, you know, guys are trying to get stuff done and they’re communicating, but they’re also having fun.

Then during our games, there’s been a good understanding of what a nine-inning game is. You don’t want your guys getting too high or too low or dog-cussing somebody in the third inning and you have six innings left or you’re down or you’re up. It’s been a mature group.

Q. Coach, it’s the first time that Tennessee has made back-to-back trips and three in the last four years. I’m curious, for the guys that were a part of the journey but didn’t play in ’21 or last year, what is it like to see so many of them have ownership in that Tennessee wouldn’t have been here this year without them and big-time contributions as they progress?

TONY VITELLO: It’s huge. If you have seen “The Last Dance,” you take motivation any way you can get it. A lot of those guys were motivated just to get here and experience it, if they hadn’t, to get here and maybe play a little bit more of a role, to get here and get action, or to get here and play better than they did in the past if they are in the other category.

It’s really fun to see this lineage. You know, at Missouri if you count the years I was on the team trying to play and getting out there every now and then and coaching, it’s longer than Tennessee, but now I’ve been here longer than the other two spots combined.

I’m not a big — my dad was at the same school for 48 years, so it’s kind of nice to see that lineage that he had while he was there, and now we’re kind of getting that with our deal. It’s paying dividends that some of the older players can coach the younger players, and there’s a little bit of handing down the torch.