The hiring process was a blur for Austin Knight.
On June 4, he was the pitching coach for East Carolina baseball. His days since the Pirates’ season ended the weekend prior had been spent recruiting transfers, and this particular Thursday included hosting one on campus for a visit in Greenville, North Carolina.
Tennessee, meanwhile, was in the market for a new pitching coach, and Knight was on its shortlist. Coach Josh Elander had only talked with him about the job less than 24 hours before, but time was of the essence, so Knight wrapped up the visit and drove 450 miles that evening for a meeting in Knoxville.
“Once I got in the car, I knew that if I was offered the job it was one that I was going to take,” Knight told Knox News.
Elander and Knight
met the morning of June 5. The official offer was presented that afternoon, and the next day Knight was announced as Tennessee’s new pitching coach.
“It was a really quick process,” Knight said. “But Tennessee just kind of checked all the boxes.”
Austin Knight's decision to come to Tennessee
Knight came to Tennessee after seven seasons at ECU, spending his first two as a volunteer assistant before being promoted to pitching coach after the 2021 season. His ECU staffs ranked top 25 nationally in ERA three times and twice ranked that high in WHIP, strikeouts per nine innings and strikeout-to-walk ratio.
He worked with 11 MLB draft picks, including 2024 first-round selection Trey Yesavage, who made the majors by 2025 and started a game in last year’s World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays. Two Pirates were selected this year: lefty Ethan Norby (Round 4, Cincinnati Reds) and righty Gavin Van Kempen (Round 12, Los Angeles Dodgers).
Tennessee’s staff had become plenty familiar with Knight when scouting ECU's pitchers ahead of the 2026 Chapel Hill Regional. Among the traits that stuck out: they threw splitters and changeups at some of the highest rates in the country.
The Vols and Pirates played on May 29 and Tennessee lost in 14 innings before being eliminated the next day. ECU was eventually sent home by host North Carolina in the regional final on May 31.
It was a disappointing end to an up-and-down season for Tennessee. Among the biggest issues was an inconsistent pitching staff that had a team ERA of 4.72, the program's highest since 2013. The Vols moved on from pitching coach Josh Reynolds less than a week after the season ended.
Knight played at Ole Miss as a catcher from 2012-15, and Tennessee had a losing record three of those four years. While there are no walkovers in the SEC, he admitted that playing the Vols “felt like a little bit of a breather” back then. From afar, he saw the program start to flip in Tony Vitello’s first few seasons as coach.
He remembered watching the Vols make the College World Series in 2021 – most vividly when then-volunteer assistant Ross Kivett threw his binder on the field after being ejected against Texas – and after the 2022 season, when Tennessee was the nation’s best team until a shock loss in the super regional, Tennessee was on Knight’s radar as a program to aspire to.
ECU was where he got his start as a paid assistant, and he prides himself on not just chasing the next job. It had to be the right situation to leave.
“The ability to have a chance to win a national championship every single year – I mean, that's what we're all chasing,” Knight said. “You want, first and foremost, to be able to recruit and have great relationships with your players, but you want to be in the mix every year to win a national championship and compete at the highest level. And that's what drew me here.”
What Austin Knight said about Josh Elander
Before the interview process, Knight didn’t have much of a relationship with Elander – he estimated they had met once, maybe twice before – but he had been talking on the phone with Kivett, Tennessee’s recruiting coordinator. They've known each other for about a decade, sharing a mutual college coach in Mike Clement, who was Kivett’s hitting coach at Kansas State for two years and Knight’s as a senior at Ole Miss. Their relationship became stronger when Kivett was in the same conference as an assistant at Houston from 2022-24.
Kivett reached out to gauge Knight's interest in joining him in Knoxville.
“I felt like we were probably on the phone four or five hours a day just going through it, talking about Coach Elander, talking about Knoxville, talking about some of the resources and how much support we have with the administration,” Kivett said. “It was not a hard sell. He wasn't the hardest recruit I've ever had.”
Before closing on a place in Knoxville to stay with his family in July, Knight had been staying with Kivett.
Between travel and nonstop recruiting, moments to settle down have been rare. Knight was thrown into recruiting Tennessee’s transfer targets, calling them immediately after accepting the position. His first day on the job was spent with Northwestern State pitcher Brody Trosclair during an on-campus visit. Trosclair committed two days later.
Even at a new school, the pitch was straightforward: Knight had a track record of developing high-level college arms and future pros at ECU, and he was bringing that to a place with ample resources in the nation’s best conference.
The Vols brought in six transfer pitchers this offseason and a talented freshman class that stayed largely intact through the MLB draft. They are also returning some high-profile pitchers like Landon Mack and Cam Appenzeller, both of whom will both figure into the starting rotation in 2027 as the program looks to return to the top of the sport.
“Excited to put our system into what is already an incredible program with the ability to compete for a national championship,” Knight said. “Not trying to look too far ahead, but I’m really excited for day one.”
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Exclusive: Inside Tennessee baseball's hiring of new pitching coach Austin Knight
