Tennessee baseball, Josh Elander hire ECU pitching coach Austin Knight
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Tennessee baseball has hired Austin Knight as pitching coach.
"We are excited to welcome Austin Knight, his wife Taylor, and his two sons Deacon and Clayton to Tennessee," coach Josh Elander said in a school release on June 6. "Austin has a proven track record of developing pitchers and leading successful staffs that compete at the highest level. He is an exceptional coach and recruiter whose values align with our culture, and we look forward to the impact he will have on our student-athletes and program."
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UT announced on June 4 it had fired pitching coach Josh Reynolds.
Knight has been on the staff at ECU since 2020 and has been the pitching coach since 2022. In that time, the Pirates have made five consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. Knight spent his first two seasons as a volunteer assistant coach.
Knight began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Little Rock in 2016 and 2017. He spent the 2018 and 2019 season as the volunteer assistant coach at Louisiana Tech.
He played for Ole Miss from 2012-15 and appeared in 120 games and helped the Rebels make it to College World Series in 2014. Knight is from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
The Vols went 38-22 in Elander's first season, seeing their streak of five straight super regional appearances snapped when they went 0-2 in the Chapel Hill Regional of the NCAA Tournament including a loss to ECU in the first game.
Tennessee had a team ERA of 4.72 this season, the program's highest since 2013. That ranked ranked seventh in the SEC and 49th nationally. An ERA of 6.05 in conference play ranked 10th in the league.
The Vols did grade well in some statistical categories. They had the 19th most strikeouts per nine innings in the country (10.3) and the seventh fewest walks per nine (3.13). They also ranked 10th nationally in WHIP (1.27), even while hitting 62 batters — the program's most since 2012.
Reynolds spent two seasons with the Vols, first as director of baseball operations and pitching performance in 2025 before being promoted for Elander's first season as head coach in 2026. He replaced former pitching coach Frank Anderson, who followed Tony Vitello to the San Francisco Giants as their director of major league pitching when Vitello was hired as the Giants' manager in October 2025.
According to the University of Tennessee system's employee salary database, Reynolds had a base annual salary of $204,999.96. Reynolds "did not have a contract" and was "an at-will employee," a university spokesperson told Knox News.
UT did not release terms of Knight's deal.
Phil Kaplan is sports director of the USA TODAY South Region.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee baseball hires ECU pitching coach Austin Knight to replace Josh Reynolds