The SEC made a faux pas. After releasing its members baseball schedules in mid September, the conference quickly retracted the schedule’s due to a mistake.
Nearly three weeks later, the SEC released an updated schedule Tuesday morning. The major change was the reason the SEC originally retracted the schedule.
The Vols will now face Arkansas in Fayetteville from April 14-16. Tennessee’s road series at Auburn was removed from the schedule.
what do we have here 🧐
— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) October 4, 2022
Despite playing just two series in the last four calendar years, Tennessee-Arkansas is a budding SEC baseball rivalry. Sixth-year head coach Tony Vitello came to Tennessee from Fayetteville where he spent four years as an assistant coach under legendary Razorbacks’ coach Dave Van Horn.
The rivalry reached its boiling point in 2021 when Vitello and Van Horn got in a yelling match in the postgame handshake line from No. 1 Arkansas’ series finale win over No. 5 Tennessee.
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The Vols’ series at Arkansas is at the midway point in conference play. Before Tennessee heads to Fayetteville, they open SEC play at Missouri, return to Lindsey Nelson Stadium to face Texas A&M, travel to Baton Rouge to face way-too-early No. 1 LSU and then face SEC east rival Florida in Knoxville.
The trip to Fayetteville is in the midst of an extremely difficult stretch of the schedule.
Following the trip to Arkansas, Tennessee faces its lone two-week home stretch of the season, hosting Vanderbilt on April 21-23 and Mississippi State on April 28-30.
Tennessee opens the month of May at Georgia before returning to Knoxville for its final home series of the regular season against Kentucky. The Vols conclude the regular season with a series at South Carolina.
While Arkansas replacing Auburn is the only opponent change on the updated Tennessee baseball schedule, the series dates radically changed. Tennessee’s series at LSU is the only one that’s date did not change.
