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Ranking Tennessee Vols sports worst affected by coronavirus ending season

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - FEBRUARY 2: Cheerleaders of the Tennessee Volunteers pregame against the Kentucky Wildcats in a game at Thompson-Boling Arena on February 2, 2016 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Patrick Murphy-Racey/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - FEBRUARY 2: Cheerleaders of the Tennessee Volunteers pregame against the Kentucky Wildcats in a game at Thompson-Boling Arena on February 2, 2016 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Patrick Murphy-Racey/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images
Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images /

8. Baseball

From a reverse reason of the softball program, we don’t know what to make of the Tennessee Vols baseball program. If this were two weeks ago, it might be at the top of this list. After all, entering his third year, Tony Vitello looked like he hadn’t missed a beat with a program that he got back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 14 years back in 2019.

It didn’t matter that they lost a ton of talent. They were red-hot. This program swept the Round Rock Classic, and part of that was beating the No. 1 ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders. They also beat the No. 25 ranked Stanford Cardinal. Simply put, they had proven they weren’t going anywhere, and that was a big deal.

Being 15-2 when things shut down and ranked No. 20 in the USA TODAY Top 25 poll would warrant this program being much higher. However, things appeared to be falling apart just as the season ended. At the time, they were a borderline top 25 program, and they were just beginning to fall out of the rankings.  The reason was an ugly series against the Wright State Raiders.

At home, the Vols lost two of three. Now, these are their only two losses on the year. But they were in the most recent weekend series before the season came to an end. That was bad news, and it suggests the program was about to take a slide. As a result, we have this program at No. 8 on the list. Maybe things ending saved a worse slide for them.

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