Raleigh looking for answers

Todd Raleigh may be scrounging around the trainer's room looking for a tourniquet right about now.

The first-year Tennessee baseball coach is trying everything he can think of to stop the bleeding.

UT (25-24, 11-13 SEC) enters a crucial home SEC series against Kentucky - first pitch at 7 tonight at Lindsey Nelson Stadium - riding a six-game losing streak.

"We're all searching for answers right now," Raleigh said. "It's a tough stretch, but tough people last, tough times don't. That's what I try to tell them."

No. 22-ranked Kentucky (35-14, 11-13) visits Knoxville looking for a similar set of answers.

After beginning the season 19-0, the Wildcats have struggled at times in the SEC and are tied with the Vols in the hunt for the eighth and final spot in the SEC tournament.

This could be the make-or-break series.

"That's what I told the team," Raleigh said. "You've got a chance to go to Hoover, or you don't.

"You want me to get up on a table and start breaking stuff and yelling? I'm past that stage."

He may be, but the Vols still had a marathon soul-searching session after losing 5-3 to Belmont on Wednesday.

One of Raleigh's points of emphasis to a young Vols' team picked to finish last in the SEC, is there is no excuse for failure when every other UT team on campus appears to be winning at a high level.

"Especially when 19 of 20 (UT) sports went to the NCAAs last year and three first-rounders (baseball's James Adkins, Julio Borbon, J.P. Arencibia) didn't make it," Raleigh said. "If everybody else at the university was bad, you might could say whatever. But everybody's good. These guys are getting equipped with the same weight room, the same meal plan.

"That's what makes this job so intriguing. You can win. All you have to do is sit in your office and look left and right. Everybody is successful."

Raleigh points to the early loss of reliever Aaron Everett to a season-ending arm injury as a turning point in the psyche of his Vols.

"We were 9-1 in one-run games when that happened," he said. "Then we started losing those close games.

"Then we started getting our brains beat in a little bit and we lost our confidence. You lose your confidence, then you start pressing."

Now is not the time to be pressing.

Kentucky was swept at home by LSU last weekend. Tennessee swept LSU in the first SEC series of the season in Knoxville.

Raleigh's hoping he sees that early version of the Vols, not the one swept at home by Vanderbilt last weekend.

Getting a blend of veteran players and freshmen to buy into his system has been his biggest chore since day one.

"It's the old 10-80-10 Bear Bryant theory," he said. "Ten percent of the people are going to do whatever you want no matter what. Ten percent aren't going to do anything no matter what you do. The other 80 percent are in the middle and could go either way.

"You've really got to focus on the 80 percent. Out of 30 guys, there's probably about three I can't do a whole lot with, three who show up and would do everything, and the other 24 are going to go either way. That comes from leadership from the coaches and the players."

Davis, Morgado On USA List: UT freshman center fielder Kentrail Davis (.346, 12 home runs, 43 RBIs) and redshirt freshman pitcher Bryan Morgado (5-3, 3.88 ERA, 91 strikeouts) have accepted invitations to compete in the USA Baseball National Team Trials on June 11-23.

"The chance to have an opportunity to represent my country and the University of Tennessee means the world to me," Morgado said in a UT release. "I'm going to give it my best and hopefully Kentrail and I can both earn a spot on the roster."

The final 22-man roster will be announced June 24 and the team begins its summer schedule against Chinese Taipei in Greenville, S.C., on June 25.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
Want to use this article? Click here for options!