FAYETTEVILLE — For Tony Vitello, good things do happen past midnight.
After Arkansas beat Missouri State after 3 a.m. Monday in an NCAA Tournament game, Vitello made two more early-morning memories that culminated in him being hired as Tennessee’s head baseball coach on Wednesday. Vitello will be formally introduced at a news conference in Knoxville, Tenn., on Friday.
Vitello has spent the past four seasons as the recruiting coordinator and hitting coach at Arkansas.
Vitello said he received a call from Tennessee athletics director John Currie around 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, shortly following the Razorbacks’ season-ending loss to Missouri State. Vitello and Currie met at an undisclosed location in the wee hours Wednesday and Vitello accepted an offer to coach the team.
“After we lost to Missouri State on Monday, I was devastated because I loved this team, maybe more than any other team I’ve coached,” Vitello said. “I’m sitting on the couch watching Tombstone and the phone rings.
“I don’t know how good I am in a formal interview, but at 1:45 in the morning you throw everything out the window. It was just chatting about the job and…that turned into a teleconference the next morning and that turned into meeting some place (Tuesday) night.”
Vitello signed a five-year agreement with the Volunteers that will pay him a base salary of $493,000 per year.
He will replace Dave Serrano at Tennessee after Serrano failed to make the NCAA postseason in six seasons. Serrano, who took UC-Irvine and Cal State Fullerton to the College World Series in previous jobs, went 27-25 in his final season with the Volunteers and finished in last place of the SEC East by three games.
Tennessee hasn’t made the NCAA postseason since 2005.
“Tennessee is a job that everyone I go to for advice - including (Arkansas Coach) Dave Van Horn - say has been great, possibly can be great and really should be great,” Vitello said. “It was hard to pass up.”
Not Next Year
Arkansas will have to wait two years to see Vitello's Tennessee team during the regular season. The Razorbacks' 2018 schedule will include games against SEC East teams South Carolina and Kentucky at home, and at Florida and Georgia, according to the league's latest out-of-division rotation schedule.
Vitello, 38, helped assemble multiple top recruiting classes at Arkansas, including one that helped the Razorbacks to the College World Series in 2015. He also was instrumental in recruiting several top players during a three-year stint at TCU - players who have helped the Horned Frogs to three consecutive College World Series and will play Missouri State in the super regional round of the NCAA Tournament this weekend.
A D1Baseball.com survey of college baseball coaches last fall rated Vitello the No. 2 recruiter in college baseball. He has been particularly strong in large metro areas such as Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and his hometown St. Louis.
“Tony has done an incredible job during his time here at Arkansas as a recruiter and a coach,” Van Horn said. “He has poured his heart and soul into our program. He’s elevated our recruiting. I knew when I hired him that I would probably only have him for three or four years.
“I’m excited for him, personally and professionally, because I know he has aspired to be a head coach at this type of program. This is great for his career and I couldn’t be more happy for Tony and his future.”
It is the second consecutive off-season that Vitello interviewed for a head coaching job in the SEC. He was never offered the job at his alma mater Missouri after interviewing last June, and told WholeHogSports.com at the time that he was never “all-in on saying yes if it was offered” and he was “pretty damn happy at Arkansas.”
Vitello indicated he had a better feeling meeting with the Tennessee AD Currie.
“It’s a phenomenal job and if I didn’t feel good about the partnership there with John Currie, maybe it would have scared me off a little bit,” Vitello said. “How relaxed the conversation was on the phone and in-person it was even better…John is very down to earth and very genuine for a person who is in that position of power.”
Vitello reportedly was not the only candidate at Tennessee. South Alabama Coach Mark Calvi, a former South Carolina assistant, told AL.com that he turned down the job after it was offered to him Tuesday.
Vitello will be one of at least three new head coaches in the Southeastern Conference next year. Alabama hired Auburn assistant Brad Bohannon last week to replace Greg Goff, who was fired after one season.
The South Carolina job also is vacant after Chad Holbrook resigned earlier this week when he missed the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons.
Tennessee is the fifth SEC program in less than two years to hire a head coach who served as an assistant coach at another SEC school. Vitello, Bohannon, Mississippi State’s Andy Cannizaro, Kentucky’s Nick Mingione and Auburn’s Butch Thompson all had no previous head coaching experience.
“Proven experience evaluating and recruiting at the highest level and in the grind of the SEC was an absolute prerequisite, and Coach Vitello checks all the boxes,” Currie said. “He has a track record of helping to build healthy and competitive programs—from those earliest relationships formed during the recruiting process through the development of young men into major league ballplayers.”
It’s too early to know where Van Horn will turn in his search for Vitello’s replacement, but the position has long had a coach with strong recruiting ties in Texas. Arkansas had 11 Texans on the roster this season, signed eight from the state last November and has several more committed in future classes.
“There’s a lot of population and some kids want to get away from home, play in the SEC and they can come up here because it’s not too far,” Van Horn said of recruiting Texas last month. “…Texas is one of our top areas to recruit every year.”