KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Friday night, Tennessee softball took on Lee University in their last fall exhibition game of the year. The Lady Vols came away with a 14-1 win, and after the game head coach Karen Weekly spoke with the media. Weekly called Friday the Lady Vols’ best night of the fall on hard hit balls. She also talked Bailee Shelton and Maddi Rutan in the circle, Emma Clarke’s leadership at third, the illegal pitch issue and what she wants to see from the pitching staff behind Sage Mardjetko and Erin Nuwer. Here’s everything she said.

Quick takeaways from the final fall ball game

“Well, first of all, I think Lee’s got a really good team. The way they swung the bats, the way they played defense, really fundamentally sound, really well coached team. Emily does a great job. She’s been there a long time and always puts a winner on the field. So I thought that was a good team for us to play against in our last game.

“I think the hitting continues to improve. I think we were above 50% tonight on hard hit balls, which is the best we’ve done in a game this fall. And I think they’re seeing all their hard work paying off. They’ve been working hard, but there’s some times we’ve had to kind of push the sense of urgency to make the adjustments. But they’ve responded.

“I like the way Maggie had a rough inning, some hard hits, they scored a run, but it didn’t faze her at all. And I think that’s a sign of our entire freshman class. They’re pretty low drama type people. They don’t get too high or too low. They just keep putting one foot in front of the other and getting after it the next pitch. So I think their maturity has been a real bonus for our team. Sometimes you can spend a lot of your energy trying to get your freshmen just to mentally hang in there, and this class has been really, really mature in that respect.”

What Maddi Rutan did in the circle

“I think Maddi just competes her tail off. She just loves to get out there and get after it. And when Maddi just kind of clears her head and just has this attitude of, I’m just going to beat you every pitch, you get really good results out of her. And we’re going to need that.”

Evaluating freshman Bailee Shelton’s outing with seven strikeouts in three innings

“She’s a big time competitor and she’s one of the freshmen that I’m talking about that just stay really levelheaded. She’s just always in go mode. She’s not going to dwell on anything that happened. And I like the way she swung the bat. I expect some big things from her in her career.

“She had a little setback this fall with an injury that kept her out for a while. But again, you see her, she got limited action on Wednesday, a little more action tonight. And she’s one of those players that can step right in. Doesn’t need practice. She just wants to get in and play.”

Her message to the rest of the freshman class about carving out a role in the spring

“Well, just compete every day and you never know what’s going to happen. You look at us tonight, I think we had one player that we substituted in outside the circle because we’re so banged up. Hopefully that won’t be the case in the spring. We’re probably holding some people back right now, being a little more conservative because it’s fall.

“But it’s a very competitive team. It’s a deep team. You can get frustrated by that, or you can understand that when your opportunity comes, you need to be ready. And you never know when that opportunity is going to come. So that’s the message to not just the freshmen, really everybody.”

Addressing the illegal pitch calls this fall

“Interesting you bring that up, because that was my message in the circle just now. For all the good things we did tonight, that’s got to get cleaned up. It’s been something our pitchers have struggled with all fall. We’re eight games into this and we’re still getting illegal pitch calls.

“It’s just a discipline. You’ve got to be disciplined every single pitch you throw in your bullpen so that becomes a habit, so you are never doing that. Because we’ve got arms and elite stuff, but an illegal pitch can wipe all that out in a second. And you don’t want that call to come out at the worst possible time.”

What she liked about Bailee’s work in the circle

“I like her pace, and her teammates love playing behind that. When you work at a pace like that, there’s no opportunity to dwell on something. The pitch is gone. Get the ball. Let’s go. Next pitch.

“I think she threw a lot of strikes tonight. I thought she threw her rise ball really effectively tonight and mixed her fastball, slash drop in well with it. But again, she just competes. She can see, this is how I need to get this hitter out, and she does it for us.”

Elsa Morrison attacking pitches early in the count as a sophomore

“It’s such a difference watching a sophomore versus a freshman. She’s attacking pitches early in the at bat. There’s no hesitation. Every single pitch has a life of its own, and she’s looking for a ball she can drive. And she’s one who’s worked a lot of extra time with Ehren to refine her mechanics. We need her doing what she’s done these last two nights, which is taking those middle, middle in pitches and turning on them.”

How the infield looks, especially Emma Clarke at third

“Early in the fall when we decided we’re going to put her there and kind of see what happens, it didn’t take us too long to realize she’s doing really well, and we just need to leave her there so she can get more and more comfortable. That’s why she’s gotten so many of these innings over there. It’s important to get her comfortable.

“I think Karley looks really good at second. Bella, obviously we know what Bella can do at short. First base is probably the one that’s still a little bit up in the air, in part because two of our first basemen have been out so much of the fall, Makenzie Butt and Amayah Doyle. So we haven’t been able to get reps from them. But that’s allowed Meredith Barnhart to get a ton of reps and for her to get comfortable over there. So there’s always a silver lining to everything.

“And then you’ve got Halle Bailey in there swinging the bat. That’s going to be hard to keep out of the lineup with what she can do. She’s such a good slapper, and right now we’re having her swing away all the time so she can get better at that. But she still has a really dynamic slap tool in her tool belt, too.”

Whether Clarke is the leader of the infield

“Oh, I think so, yeah. She needs help in that respect. No one person can lead the whole team. That’s too big of a burden and responsibility for them. But there’s no question she’s the voice that you hear first, and everybody listens to.”

Who has stepped up as a leader this offseason

“I would say Elsa Morrison is really responding to the challenge to lead more on the field. I think she has a lot of natural leadership qualities, and the things that go through her mind are dead on. She just needs to say them without hesitation.

“Karley Shelton, I would say, just because I didn’t get to coach her before. I knew what she could do, but probably didn’t know the extent of how good she is. She is a really, really, really good hitter, and somebody who speaks up in our team huddles and in our team meetings. Another one that I think will be a really good leader for us when she gets just a little bit more comfortable in this new environment.”

Where Tennessee grew the most this fall and what still needs attention

“No question we grew a lot offensively. We still have next week. We’re going to intersquad a couple of times. Thursday night at 5:00 is going to be open to the public. That’ll be our last official night of fall ball. But offensively we saw us make pretty big strides. Still a lot of work to do, but the things that Ehren’s asked of them this fall, I think we’re finally starting to see those things happen a little bit more consistently here as we wrap up outside competition.

“We just got to get healthy. That’s the biggest thing. The lineup we’ve had out there has been really, really solid. We have this depth, but sometimes we don’t have a chance to really develop it because we’ve had so many kids having to miss too many of their practice and playing opportunities.

“I would say that maybe the question mark, but I feel good about the people we have that can answer it, is the pitching behind Sage and Erin. We know what Sage and Erin can do. They’ve done it at the highest level. We believe that Maddi and Bailee and Maggie and Peyton can all step in and provide really, really good innings at an SEC level. But that’s probably the one thing we just haven’t seen enough of.

“Part of that is we didn’t play that kind of a schedule in the fall. That’s one thing that I wish we could do over, just schedule a little bit differently to get some more competitive pitching on the other side to really challenge our hitters. But that’s what our intersquads are for.”