Tennessee earns 8 seed in SEC baseball tournament

The Tennessee Volunteers finished their regular season on a slide, losing 6 of their last 7 series to end the year after dropping 2 of 3 to Arkansas last weekend. That put Tennessee in eighth place in the SEC going into the SEC Tournament in Hoover next week.

Here’s how the bracket looks:

Tennessee will get the winner of the 9/16 matchup between Alabama and Missouri. The Tigers finished the year 3-27 in SEC play, with all 3 of those wins coming against Texas A&M earlier this month. Anything can happen in baseball, but it’s quite likely the Vols will get another shot at the Crimson Tide in their opening game on Wednesday morning.

If the Vols were to get past (let’s go ahead and say) Alabama, the #1 team in the SEC and nation in the Texas Longhorn s would be waiting for them on Thursday in the quarterfinals. As such, if the Vols hope to pick up a couple of big wins in order to make a statement for hosting in the NCAA tournament in a couple of weeks, they’re going to have to do it by going through tourney-bound Alabama and one of the elite teams in college baseball in the Longhorns. And on the same side of the bracket – should they get through there – is 4 seed Vanderbilt and 5 seed Georgia. Likely one of those two would be waiting.

But that’s how things are in the best conference in baseball by a mile. Nothing is easy. Tennessee will have to stop making things look tough if they hope to have anything more than a cup of coffee in Hoover. Pitching (for players not named Liam Doyle), defense, and hitting with RISP – which have been a struggle over the last month and a half – all have to improve.

We’ll see if they can soon enough, starting on Wednesday.