The college baseball regular season is over and the SEC Tournament bracket is officially set ahead of next week’s conference tournament in Hoover.
Tennessee baseball is the one-seed in the tournament, earning a first round bye. The Vols will begin play at the tournament at 5:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday evening in Hoover. Tony Vitello’s seventh Tennessee squad will face the winner of the Vanderbilt-Florida game on Tuesday.
With the first round bye, Tennessee is on to the double elimination portion of the tournament. The SEC Tournament remains double elimination until the semifinal games on Saturday. Tennessee has to win two out of three games to advance to the Saturday semifinal.
Other top teams in Tennessee’s side of the bracket include four-seed Texas A&M and five-seed Mississippi State.
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The Vols enter the SEC Tournament (46-10, 22-8 SEC) and earned a share of the SEC Championship for the second time in three seasons. Tennessee dropped its first series of SEC play at Alabama before reeling off nine straight series wins including a road series win at Kentucky and series sweeps of LSU, Missouri and South Carolina at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
Tennessee has had mixed results in its four trips to the SEC Tournament under Vitello. The Vols were eliminated in the single elimination first round in both 2019 and 2023 but made a run to the championship game in 2021 and won the SEC Tournament in 2022.
There are little to no NCAA Tournament ramifications for Tennessee entering the week in Hoover. The Vols have locked up a top eight national seed meaning they’ll play at Lindsey Nelson Stadium every step of the way on the road to the College World Series in Omaha.
The biggest storyline for Tennessee in Hoover is the potential return of star right-handed pitcher AJ Russell. Forearm tightness has sidelined Russell since the Ole Miss series early in SEC play but the sophomore is nearing his return to the mound.
