Which Vols program will be the next to win a natty?

#26
#26
Basketball. As long as they continue to hang around the top ten there’s going to be a breakthrough run. Last year TN beat #1 and #3. They also won last year’s Battle 4 Atlantis against a very strong 8 team field. A couple of years ago TN was the AP #1 ranked team for more than a month.

There’s less separation between the Duke, UNC, KY, and Kansas blue bloods and the next tier (of which TN is establishing itself as a solid member of).
 
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#27
#27
Football, Baseball, or Softball seem like the best chance of team sports. Out of those, I will go with Baseball.
 
#30
#30
If the landscape remains the same w regards to our UT head coaches, my money would be on Coach Heupel and his pigskin players. Next best chance would be Coach V. Be surprised if Weakly, Jolie or Barnes can mustard enough mojo to win it all.

However, am enjoying the title of SEC Champs for the time being. Job well done coaches and players. UT is back baby!!
 
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#31
#31
I think this is a particularly impossible prediction to make.

Great coaches, recruiting great players, and developing them well, with really good schemes, can push a program up into the elite ranks. Can make their teams competitive at the top level of their sport. Can get them 95% of the way to a championship, you might say.

Problem is, there are other great coaches at other programs doing all those same things. Because of them, because of that really tough peer competition at the very top, winning those last couple of games each season, that's hard no matter who you are. There always seems to be a little luck involved, a little bit of the stars aligning, a little good fortune required on top of all the talent and genius and sweat equity. That's the last 5%.

So who knows?

What's awesome is that there are so many sports in which we have become elite participants, and have put ourselves in position to have a real chance at a national title. So many of them.

It is great to be a Tennessee Vol these days!
 
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#32
#32
GoodmanVol said:
Apparently Cornhole!
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I am going to limit myself to 'major' sports. :^)))))
I am going with basketball in 2023-2024. I think the men get it done.
However, I will celebrate loudly no matter what sport it is ... I am not opposed to multiple nattys in multiple years.
If we keep winning the SEC All-Sports Trophy ... it is going to be great to be a Tennessee Vol.
 
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#33
#33
Interesting question, my odds on the sports to win NC:

Baseball- 50%, TV is only 44 so if he stays he has 20 more years at least. As mentioned we need to get the stadium question resolved like yesterday.

Football- 25%, Josh only 45 so like TV he should have 20 more years. Got a break with the 12 team expansion and not having to play UGA and UT every year.

For comparison when Saban was 45 he had been HC at MSU with a record of
12-11-1.

Softball- 25% Karen only 49 so has at least a decade to go. Has a 3rd place National finish on her resume. Gasso at Oklahoma is 61 , she can't stay there forever.

Womens hoops- 5%- love Kelly who is 46, but unfortunately she has 2 huge Elephants in the SEC, Dawn Staley who is 53 and Kim Mulkey who is 61. Would take a generation type like Griner, Maya Moore or Breanna Stewart to get over the Top.

Mens hoops- 0% As long as we have the Combination of Barnes, who is almost 68 and the programs history of choking in March we have no chance. He has been coaching for 36 years and has one FF and the program has 1 Elite 8 in its history.

Of course the big question is who will replace RB? Until this year I though Dr Danny might take a run at Oats but he is certainly and deservedly so now out of the picture. So would we go to Barnes' coaching tree? Who knows. Really impressed with Dennis Gates at Mizzou but would he leave COMO for Knoxville.
 
#34
#34
Savannahbayvol said:
Interesting question, my odds on the sports to win NC:

Baseball- 50%, TV is only 44 so if he stays he has 20 more years at least. As mentioned we need to get the stadium question resolved like yesterday.

Football- 25%, Josh only 45 so like TV he should have 20 more years. Got a break with the 12 team expansion and not having to play UGA and UT every year.

For comparison when Saban was 45 he had been HC at MSU with a record of
12-11-1.

Softball- 25% Karen only 49 so has at least a decade to go. Has a 3rd place National finish on her resume. Gasso at Oklahoma is 61 , she can't stay there forever.

Womens hoops- 5%- love Kelly who is 46, but unfortunately she has 2 huge Elephants in the SEC, Dawn Staley who is 53 and Kim Mulkey who is 61. Would take a generation type like Griner, Maya Moore or Breanna Stewart to get over the Top.

Mens hoops- 0% As long as we have the Combination of Barnes, who is almost 68 and the programs history of choking in March we have no chance. He has been coaching for 36 years and has one FF and the program has 1 Elite 8 in its history.

Of course the big question is who will replace RB? Until this year I though Dr Danny might take a run at Oats but he is certainly and deservedly so now out of the picture. So would we go to Barnes' coaching tree? Who knows. Really impressed with Dennis Gates at Mizzou but would he leave COMO for Knoxville.
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Oops meant UAT
 
#37
#37
Of the big five, if you will (football, the two basketball teams, softball, and baseball) I think football wins one first. Basketball teams don’t inspire a lot of confidence in me, and softball and baseball are too much of a crapshoot. There’s less that has to go right for football to win one.
 
#38
#38
Baseball, for sure. We have the #1 recruiting class in the country for 2024 right now. Have made the playoffs twice in three years. Tony Vitello will win a national championship for Tennessee. Just a matter of time.

Football still has a tough climb, but we’re on the right path.
 
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#39
#39
Baseball might be the toughest sport to win a natty in. I used to think basketball but now I’m thinking baseball. So football it is with Nico at QB
 
#42
#42
turbovol said:
I'd say our best shot is men's tennis, which has been to the national semifinal twice, I believe, in the last four years.

After tennis I'd say baseball: we've been close, and we should remain good. Problem is, there are quite a few
very good baseball teams every year. We saw that last year.

Softball? We just played the biggest game of the season--the biggest game in many seasons--when we met Oklahoma in the winner's
bracket of the championship series. Oklahoma went back to the pitcher who won its first game in the championship series--pitching 7 innings
in the victory. Everyone rightly assumed that Weekly would pitch our multi-year All American, Ashley Rogers--one of the best pitchers in the country
for four years. Rogers pitched 4 innings in our game-one victory. If not Rogers, for some strange reason, then certainly our number 2 pitcher, Gottshall, who had a great season, would get the nod. She'd pitched 3 innings in relief in our game-one win.

Nope. Karen Weekly--for reasons that I'm not sure she's fully explained, perhaps because there can be no good explanation---opted not to pitch either Rogers or Gottshall. Instead, she chose to start our No. 3 pitcher--whose innings had decreased fairly significantly late in the season, as she struggled with her form, and who had pitched a whopping total of 2 innings in the NCAA regional and super-regional. (She didn't pitch at all in the super-regional.) Not surprisingly, we fell behind 0-3 by the second or 3rd inning---and went on to lose the game. Weekly seemed to give up on the game before even playing it. No? After pulling Pickens, our No. 3, she brought in two pitchers who'd hardly pitched all years--almost guaranteeing that we would give up more runs and obviating any chance for a comeback. With coaching decisions like that, we won't win a national title in softball.
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Agree. We played our numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6 pitchers, and they pitched 4 innings, because we were run ruled in the fifth inning. It was 3-0 after the second inning, and 9-0 after the third inning. They said Ashley could have gone only 2 innings, due to soreness, but she pitched a whole game the next day, and a partial game the day after that. Our number 2 pitcher, Payton, was also in the dugout. It killed the momentum we had built up to that game. Our team had rallied so often behind our best pitchers, but they never played, and we didn’t score.

Softball vs Oklahoma on 6/3/2023 - Box Score - University of Tennessee Athletics
 
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#44
#44
I think Coach Josh Heupel and Coach Kellie Harper will both win more than one National Championship, it’s just a matter of time, maybe this year. 🙂
 
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#47
#47
Savannahbayvol said:
Couldn't win a game in the NCAA with you, Bernie and Reggie Johnson all 3 First round picks. :)
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Are you aware that the NCAAT field was only 32 teams, only 2 SEC schools were invited, and the teams weren’t seeded during the 3 E&B years (25 teams and 1 SEC schools when Ernie was a freshman)? That Bernard missed the 1976 NCAAT with an injury? And that Reggie was a very skinny freshman in 1977?
 
#48
#48
Thunder Good-Oil said:
Are you aware that the NCAAT field was only 32 teams, only 2 SEC schools were invited, and the teams weren’t seeded during the 3 E&B years (25 teams and 1 SEC schools when Ernie was a freshman)? That Bernard missed the 1976 NCAAT with an injury? And that Reggie was a very skinny freshman in 1977?
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Coaching has something to do with that ... we need to also remember that was at the tail end of the Ray Mears era. Ray was a good coach ... but not great ... that is mho.
 
#49
#49
SN-A-C Orange said:
Coaching has something to do with that ... we need to also remember that was at the tail end of the Ray Mears era. Ray was a good coach ... but not great ... that is mho.
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“Good”?

Mears stayed even with KY after they had a decades long head start.

Got TN its first ever NCAAT invitation (when the SEC was only given one and Adolph Rupp got almost all of them). Mears also had a national championship.
 
#50
#50
While the softball team had a great run this year, I believe the program that will win the next championship is baseball. Vitello has consistently had them competing since he's been at UT. Having deep runs in the World Series the last couple of years. I believe they overachieved this year,but showed how well coached they were. In baseball, you don't necessarily have to be a "baseball school" to win it all. Just a matter of getting hot at the right time. Look at Wake Forest.... They're the best team in the country as proof of that.


I'm rooting for Barnes to just make it to the Final Four at this point (unless he plays UNC) He's a program stabilizer,but at his age, I don't know if he can pull off his second final four in almost 40 years. I'd like to see it though.

With the 12 team playoff coming soon, I like UTs chances in football. Huepel is putting it together quicker than I expected.
 
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