Tennessee Director of Athletics Danny White held his first interview since hiring Josh Elander as Vol baseball’s new head coach on the Vol Network Saturday night.
White joined the Big Orange Countdown ahead of Tennessee football’s matchup with Kentucky for a less than three minute interview about the hire. He’ll speak in more detail about the hire on Monday morning when Tennessee holds its introductory press conference for Elander.
Here’s what What said to the Vol Network’s Brent Hubbs about choosing Elander to lead the Tennessee baseball program.
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On why Josh Elander
“He earned it. He earned it in the last eight years building our program into the powerhouse it is today and he earned it during the search process. It was a thorough search. We really vetted the best candidates across the country. Owe it to the program and where we are to do that. I thought Josh was fantastic in the interview and you don’t really get the chance to see an assistant coach in that setting until that moment. We certainly felt like he presented himself as the head coach and, ultimately, our head coach. We are proud to name him that today.”
On what made Elander stand out
“The culture of the program, how that has been built, how he would continue to lead that. The elite recruiting we have been fortunate to enjoy. How he could continue to lead that. How he portrayed himself as the CEO of a program and managing his staff. We talked about transitioning from the role of being an assistant to being a head coach. I have been through a lot of these, I was thoroughly impressed. We had some hard decisions to make because there’s some other really good candidates and good options. A couple, all of those conversations with the candidates with also what I learned from our leadership group with our players. They were phenomenal and really helped me understand what is happening with the program. I really feel like my job is to match those things up and I feel like we did that today with Josh.”
On getting feedback from the leadership group that wasn’t just about hiring Elander
“That is a great question. I started the conversation with I know you guys love coach E, this isn’t talking about individual candidates. I need to learn from your perspective what is going on with our program. We have been dominant. We’ve had a historic run but every program has strengths and weaknesses. Talk me through this. They were outstanding. I spent about an hour with those guys. We took down a bunch of notes. Then I used that in the interview process to ask follow-up questions and things from candidates.”
On if this was his fastest ever coaching search
“It is one of the fastest for sure. The signing date is right upon us. We needed to move really quickly. It is an odd time of year to be in a baseball transition. We are all really happy for Tony. The first ever in college baseball to get a big league job. It does create a difficult dynamic in the time of year. We needed to move fast, but we didn’t move too fast to make the right choice.”
