How Tennessee baseball grew into a juggernaut in the eyes of Tony Vitello's first commit

OMAHA, Neb. — Jake Rucker had a voicemail from an unknown Arkansas number.

Rucker settled onto the Team Tennessee bus following a game in the Sunbelt Classic in McAlester, Oklahoma, in June 2017. He clicked the curious notification and listened to the voicemail.

The caller identified themselves and Rucker freaked out. It was Tony Vitello, the freshly hired Tennessee baseball coach. Vitello wanted Rucker to join him in Knoxville.

“When Tony called me, it was a dream come true,” Rucker said Thursday. “I didn’t think that was going to happen to me.”

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Rucker was the first player to commit to Vitello after he was hired as the Tennessee coach on June 7, 2017. He jumped on the rocketship in its earliest days, helped build it, and is relishing every unsurprising rise toward the loftiest point to date: Tennessee (58-12) will play for a national title against Texas A&M (52-13). The best-of-three series starts Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).

This is how Vitello has done it with an unquenchable drive to win.

Why Jake Rucker bought into Tony Vitello at Tennessee

Rucker announced his commitment June 19, 2017 on social media. He posted three pictures and a short note. He called the recruiting process “long and hard."

The final decision was anything but. Tennessee was Rucker’s biggest offer and the Greenbrier native craved staying in-state to play college baseball.

Vitello was a shimmering selling point and it was easy to buy into the new coach. He didn’t promise Rucker immediate playing time and told him nothing was guaranteed in his career. Vitello knew that himself first as a player then as a head coach.

“You have to earn it in the SEC,” Rucker said. “The amount of pressure and immediate impact that Coach V felt to compete in the SEC right away is probably something not a lot of coaches go through.”

Rucker arrived at UT in fall 2018 after the Vols went 29-27 in Vitello's first season. He could already see a shift. There was no crazy vision. Vitello’s competitive nature permeated the roster rapidly. He is a player’s coach and the players responded to how Vitello cared for them and approached the daily work.

Tennessee broke through in 2019. It won a series against Ole Miss in the final regular-season weekend to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005. It won 40 games and reached the Chapel Hill Regional final.

“I knew right then and there with the roster we had at the time and how we competed with a really good North Carolina team, it was like, ‘We can really do something with this,’ ” Rucker said.

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Tennessee’s on-field progress led to off-field changes and the Vols turned locker room construction into a battle in the fall of 2020.

UT played games in the fall to determine which team got to use the locker room and which team had to change in the dugout.

“That put a winning mindset of wanting to get to bigger and better things,” said Rucker, who was selected by the Minnesota Twins in the 2021 MLB Draft. “That was the recipe to compete for championships and working to get to Omaha every year — just like we have been.”

Rucker is firm in his belief Tennessee had an Omaha team in 2020. UT started 15-2 before the COVID-19 pandemic halted the season, which “made us more hungry to get better and get to that level,” Rucker said.

Tennessee got to Omaha in 2021 for the first time since 2005. Rucker pointed to the perfect coaching staff being a reason why the Vols built a power so quickly. They instilled hard work and tenacity into players and fans gravitated to the ascending program.

Vitello revamped the roster and injected elite talent into it, bringing in prospects like Drew Gilbert and Jordan Beck. He meshed the returners and incomers with junior college additions like Liam Spence and Chad Dallas. He flexed the old recruiting muscle that earned him a reputation at Arkansas and hitting coach Josh Elander proved he's an equal recruiting force.

The buy-in begot more buy-in. Vitello created a culture so firmly built on success so it was only natural success would follow.

“Having that winning mentality and the passion he has, a lot of people don’t get it,” Rucker said. “Most people won’t because very few people get to play for him. When you get to see how he really is and how he is one of the greatest people off the field, he is all for you and he is all about it.”

How Tony Vitello instilled winning attitude into Tennessee baseball

Rucker committed to a program he believes people saw as a bottom-tier SEC program at a football school.

He knew something about it would be different — and quickly — under Vitello.

“He wants to win,” Rucker said. “That was my main thing I got from Tony V — he wants to win way more than you do. Having that with a coach and he isn’t playing? It is who you want to play for because you want to win for him. When you win for him, it is one of the best feelings in the world.

“I know those guys right now are on that winning high of beating the brakes off of guys because they know they want it more.”

Tennessee has reached the College World Series three times in the past four seasons. It won a program-record 57 games in 2022 with a juggernaut team that held the No. 1 spot for two months. It reached Omaha again in 2023 and then this season eclipsed it all.

The Vols have won 58 games heading into the CWS final against Texas A&M, where they will play for the first national title in program history.

Rucker can’t say he saw this coming. This would have been hard to fathom, but it wasn’t impossible because of Vitello.

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“I was fully bought in and I knew that he could do it,” Rucker said.

The Vols clinched their spot in the College World Series final seven years to the day from Rucker’s commitment.

It feels like so long ago to Rucker. But maybe it isn’t all that far in the past after all. Tennessee has simply covered a lot of ground in a short time under an unrelenting Vitello.

“There will be even more appearances in Omaha to come,” Rucker said. “It is awesome to see from where we were before and now where we're at.”

Mike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at michael.wilson@knoxnews.com and follow him on Twitter @ByMikeWilson. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tony Vitello's first commitment knew Tennessee would be a juggernaut