Tennessee baseball’s regular season came to a close Saturday with an 8-4 loss at Arkansas. It marked the Vols’ fifth straight series loss and led to Tennessee finishing the regular season with a 41-15 (16-14 SEC) record.
A series victory over Arkansas very well might have moved Tennessee back on the regional host like entering this week’s SEC Tournament. But after going 7-11 in their final 18 SEC games, the Vols look poised to go on the road to open the NCAA Tournament. Where could that be?
D1Baseball projects Tennessee to land as a two-seed in the Atlanta Regional, matching up with ACC Regular-Season Champion Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets project as the No. 16 overall seed. Three-seed Arizona State and four-seed Columbia are the two other teams projected to land in the Atlanta Region.
The Atlanta Regional is matched up with Austin Regional, meaning if Tennessee gets past the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament then they could head to Austin to face Texas in the super regionals.
If Tennessee doesn’t get matched up with Georgia Tech, who are some other hosts the Vols could play at in the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament? The rules prohibit conference teams from playing at the host site of another team in their conference.
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D1Baseball has TCU as the No. 15 overall seed, Southern Miss as the No. 14 overall seed, UCLA as the No. 13 overall seed, Clemson as the No. 12 overall seed, Florida State as the No. 11 overall seed, Coastal Carolina as the No. 10 overall seed, Oregon State as the No. 9 overall seed, Oregon as the No. 8 overall seed and North Carolina as the No. 4 overall seed.
Those are the teams to watch for when it comes to Tennessee’s draw. Conventional wisdom would indicate that Tennessee is more likely to play one of the lower seeded teams since they’ll be one of the top two seeds. But that’s not how the selection committee often does things. They typically look to match teams up regionally to limit travel costs.
That was the case two years ago when Tennessee was one of the top two-seeds and traveled to face No. 4 overall seed Clemson in a regional.
Could Tennessee still host a regional despite its poor finish to the season? It seems unlikely but not completely out of the question. The Vols have to make a deep run in this week’s SEC Tournament to give themselves any chance of hosting a regional.
Tennessee opens up play at the SEC Tournament in Hoover Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m. ET when they’ll face either nine-seed Alabama or 16-seed Missouri.
