Tennessee baseball earns No. 10 seed in SEC Tournament, plays South Carolina
Tennessee baseball will be the No. 10 seed in the SEC Tournament after finishing with a 15-15 conference record.
The Vols (37-19) will play No. 15 seed South Carolina (22-34, 7-23 SEC) in the first round on May 19 (5:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network) at the Hoover Met in Hoover, Alabama. They face a five-game path to the title through the 16-team, single-elimination bracket.
If Tennessee beats South Carolina, it would play No. 7 seed Arkansas (36-19, 17-13) in the second round on May 20 (5:30 p.m., SEC Network), with the winner matching up with No. 2 seed Texas (40-12, 19-10). That quarterfinal would be played on May 22 (4 p.m., SEC Network).
Semifinals will be played on May 23 before the championship game on May 24.
Although the Vols ended the regular season with back-to-back series wins against Texas and Oklahoma, it wasn’t enough to earn a first-round bye, reserved for the top eight seeds. They missed a bye by one game; had they beat Oklahoma in the last game of the regular season on May 16, they would have won the head-to-head tiebreaker with Mississippi State – which went 16-14 in the SEC – and jumped into the top eight.
The difference was ultimately Tennessee’s shaky start to conference play, as it held a 4-8 record after a loss to LSU on April 5. Still, it won four of its last six SEC series to finish .500 or better in the league for the sixth straight season.
This is the first time Tennessee has gone six straight seasons without a losing record in SEC play since the league started playing 30 conference games in 1996.
The Vols have won five SEC Tournament titles in program history, including recent championships in 2022 and 2024. Last year, they lost to eventual champion Vanderbilt in the semifinals.
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee baseball’s SEC Tournament will begin vs South Carolina
