IBTIT: Tennessee Vols vs. Evansville Purple Aces Super Regional (June 7,8,9)

It's Super Regional Time in Tennessee

Recently: Tennessee swept the Knoxville Regional, beating the #4, 3, and 2 seeds, in that order. Other than trailing Southern Miss 2-3 after the 5th inning Sunday, there wasn’t too much drama for the Vols on the weekend. Conversely, Evansville was involved in one of the most dramatic regionals of the opening round. While most of the nation was expecting Wake Forest to overcome host East Carolina and set up a Chase Burns vs. Tennessee Super Regional, the unranked four-seed Purple Aces were shocking the college baseball world, beating the home team Pirates twice to advance, despite having to dig deep into their roster and bullpen. The least likely team to come out of Greenville did, and now the Aces are playing with house money.

Previously on Vols vs. Purple Aces: This will be the first meeting on the diamond between these schools. There are precious few games between the schools in any major sport. Tennessee did beat Evansville in softball in 2011, but lost two basketball games against the Aces in 1953 and 1962.

Preview Graphic:

At the time of writing, neither team has announced starting pitchers, so these are best guesses. It’s easy to look at this matchup and write Evansville off, considering they would normally be little more than a challenging midweek opponent for UT. But they’ve made it this far, and come out of one of the most competitive regions last weekend, so they’ve got to be taken seriously. Kenton Deverman is a legit threat on the mound Friday for Evansville. If he can shut down Tennessee’s bats, which were hot last weekend, then suddenly it becomes an uphill climb for the Vols, with a quick turnaround for Saturday morning’s game. The Aces’ top three hitters are no slouches either. And while you might think sure they’ve got some talent, but they can’t have much depth, remember that they had the depth to go to Monday’s if necessary game against ECU and beat the home squad.

With that in mind, consider that Tennessee still is the top seed in this tournament for a reason. The RPI win probabilities at warrennolan.com are certainly in the Vols’ favor:

What I’m getting at is, Tennessee should come out of this weekend with a ticket to Omaha. But there are just 16 teams left playing baseball at this juncture, and there’s a reason Evansville is one of them. Don’t expect the Vols to win without effort.

Extraneous: The only thing I really know about Evansville is that in the 1980s and 90s, they wore basketball uniforms with sleeves. I don’t mean they wore sleeves under the jerseys, I mean the jerseys are like a t-shirt:

Apparently they still wear this style as a throwback occasionally. I remember as a kid seeing this in March Madness and wondering if it was some kind of religious thing, like maybe Evansville was an Amish community or something, and the sleeveless look was indecent. Apparently though, it was because a former coach considered how his players practiced in t-shirts, and figured they’d be more comfortable playing like they practice. They did go to several NCAA tournaments back then, so I guess it worked?