Tennessee baseball clinched its ninth straight series victory on Friday night when the Vols overcame a 3-0 deficit to beat South Carolina 8-3 at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
With the win, Tennessee improved to 45-10 (21-8 SEC) with Saturday’s series finale also serving as the regular season finale.
Where do the Vols stand in the SEC Championship race with one game remaining in the regular season?
It’s down to a two-team race between Kentucky and Tennessee after Arkansas dropped its series opener against Texas A&M on Thursday night. In fact, Kentucky already clinched a share of the regular-season SEC Championship by holding serve and knocking off Vanderbilt 10-5 and 17-7 the first two games of the weekend series.
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The Wildcats (39-11, 22-7 SEC) are one-game ahead of Tennessee in the standings and can clinch the outright conference title with either a win or a Volunteer loss on Saturday afternoon.
But if Vanderbilt were to take the series finale at Kentucky and Tennessee were to complete the weekend sweep of South Carolina then the Vols would then split the SEC Regular-Season Championship with Kentucky.
While both teams would earn a share of the title, Tennessee would be the one-seed in next week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama. The Vols hold the tiebreaker over Kentucky after winning two out of three games over the Wildcats last month in Lexington.
In any other scenario, Tennessee baseball would be the three-seed because the winner of the SEC West is guaranteed one of the top two seeds in the conference tournament.
Tennessee baseball’s regular season finale is at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday afternoon against South Carolina. SEC Network+ is streaming the game. Kentucky’s series finale against Vanderbilt starts an hour earlier at noon ET.
