Tennessee baseball mostly uses its program-wide GroupMe for basic communication of schedules and coaching points. But redshirt junior reliever Brandon Arvidson bucked the norm on Friday morning, sending a video that set the tone ahead of the Vols’ 5-1 series-opening win over Texas.
“He sent a message in our GroupMe this morning, basically that, ‘hey, we’re going to win this game,'” Tennessee head coach Josh Elander said. “So it’s kind of cool to see, just kind of out of nowhere.”
Arvidson’s message was a legendary video of Nick Saban’s pregame speech before Alabama’s 2017 national championship win over Georgia. An impassioned speech, Saban tells his team that “the ultimate disrespect is when someone takes what is yours. And this is our game. It’s our time.”
“It was a video of Nick Saban in the locker room and he’s just saying ‘it’s our house’ in the video,” Tennessee pitcher Tegan Kuhns said. “It definitely got us pumped up. A lot of likes.”
The message set the tone for the day, giving Tennessee an edge ahead of the highly important series. The Vols entered the weekend badly needing to win at least one game against No. 4 Texas with a potential series victory going a long way towards Tennessee’s NCAA Tournament hopes.
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That edge carried over into the game. When Tennessee scored three early runs on Texas ace Dylan Volantis, Kuhns walked around the dugout telling his teammates that the game was over.
“It fires us up going into a Friday night,” second baseman Blake Grimmer said. “Kind of backs against the wall. It kind of shows the type of leader that Arv (is) and he’s from Texas and just shows his competitiveness and it integrated into our whole locker room after he sent that.”
Kuhns put his money where his mouth was, recording a career-high 15 strikeouts while shutting out the Longhorns’ high-powered offense in seven innings pitched.
Arvidson was less dominant but made sure his Friday morning prediction came to fruition, recording the final six outs while allowing one earned run.
The Texas series has a little extra juice for Arvidson. He grew up 25 miles from Austin. He played for Jim Schlossnagle as a freshman at Texas A&M and was committed to Texas before Schlossnagle took over as head coach. A season ago, Arvidson made Tony Vitello promise to pitch him if Tennessee played the Longhorns in the SEC Tournament.
Arvidson downplayed his Longhorn connections postgame, instead emphasizing the importance of the series for Tennessee. But the veteran has earned the respect of his teammates and his Friday morning message set the tone for a crucial victory.
“We always give the players ownership that this is their program,” Elander said. “But that was a good one to see this morning. And then to be able to say that, and then come out and do it, that’s what we need to be about around here. So credit to Arv for doing that.”
