HOOVER, Ala. — Tennessee baseball’s run at the SEC Tournament came to a close with a poor showing in a 10-0 run-rule loss against Vanderbilt. A sour ending to an otherwise solid week, Tennessee now turns its attention to next week’s NCAA Tournament.
The big question is whether or not Tennessee did enough this season to earn a top 16 seed and host a regional next week in Knoxville?
“We are not in control of it,” Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello said. “We will let those people that are fully qualified sit in the room and diagnose that. I think the fact we came here and got two wins and racked up RPI — I would assume Texas and Vanderbilt are 1-2 or 1 and 2 or 3 or 4 in RPI. Alabama was a swing host team. We were able to beat them. Florida was a swing host team. We were fortunate enough to beat them in the regular season and outlast them here.”
Tennessee was a consensus regional host in the Field of 64 projections from various outlets on Saturday morning before its SEC Tournament ending loss against Vanderbilt. D1Baseball had the Vols as their No. 13 overall seed, giving the Vols some wiggle room for a loss.
Vitello’s eighth Tennessee team enters the NCAA Tournament with a 43-16 record. Combining the regular season with the SEC Tournament, the Vols went 18-15 against conference opponents. At the time of publication, Tennessee ranks No. 11 in RPI, ahead of Ole Miss, Alabama, Florida, Southern Miss, TCU and Georgia Tech. All of those teams also sit on the hosting bubble.
As Vitello noted, moving firmly ahead of Alabama and Florida should bode well for the Vols. Ole Miss still being alive in Hoover could change the pecking order but it is not necessarily one or the other.
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Tennessee struggled at home during the regular season, losing four of its five SEC series at Lindsey Nelson Stadium and arguably playing better away from home than they did in Knoxville.
“I think it would be phenomenal for the fans to have another go-around,” Vitello said. “It was kind of a quirky year where timing of some things and weather of things just wasn’t ideal. There are times we had an opportunity to entertain the fans, which is certainly not the goal but it did not occur. They can be an advantage for us, too. We talked in the cages on time when we won a one-run game — not easy to say a bunch of times — but they were an edge for us in that one in particular. They have been that, too, in the past few years. I think it would be great for them and it would be great for our kids.”
The home field advantage at Lindsey Nelson Stadium has certainly been an advantage for Tennessee in the postseason in recent years. Tennessee has not lost a game in a home regional during Vitello’s tenure, sweeping through the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in 2021, 2022 and 2024.
The Vols are 2-1 in home super regionals under Vitello, defeating LSU in 2021, falling to Notre Dame in 2022 and knocking off Evansville in 2024. Tennessee likely would not host a super regional unless its corresponding regional host gets upset.
While Tennessee’s run in Hoover came to a disappointing end, it was undoubtedly a positive week for the Vols. Improving its hosting bid is a big reason why.
“Sour taste for everybody today but Hunter (Ensley) pointed it out very well,” Vitello said. “The thing this team needs to do is when we have a three-game set is win a series and we are going to have to earn the right to have another series or three-game set because a regional is a little bit of a different animal. As he said, these kids have played well on the road but yeah I’d like to be in Lindsey Nelson Stadium.”
