Tennessee defeats South Carolina, secures No. 1 seed in SEC Tournament

Tennessee needed multiple things to happen to secure the No. 1 seed in next week’s SEC baseball tournament. After Kentucky clinched at least a share of the league title, the Vols needed the Wildcats to lose in addition to a victory over South Carolina.

Tony Vitello’s group took care of the first order of business Saturday afternoon, defeating the Gamecocks 4-1 to improve to 22-8 in SEC play. That left the Kentucky game – and Vanderbilt left no room for doubt.

The Commodores’ offense woke up in a big way Saturday in Lexington, defeating Kentucky 12-4 to spoil the Wildcats’ chances of an outright SEC championship. As a result, Tennessee will officially be the No. 1 seed next week in Hoover while Kentucky drops to the No. 3 seed behind Arkansas.

Now, the top four seeds are set as Saturday’s games continue. Tennessee holds the top spot, followed by Arkansas at No. 2, Kentucky at No. 3 and Texas A&M at No. 4. The final bracket will become official Saturday night as the top 12 teams get ready to head to Hoover for the conference tournament starting Tuesday.

Zander Sechrist got the win for Tennessee after a dominant showing against South Carolina. In six innings of work, he held South Carolina scoreless and allowed just four hits while striking out four. Aaron Combs got the save as he struck out two Gamecocks hitters in his 1.2 scoreless innings of work.

Now, Tennessee will get ready to head to Hoover as the top seed, and Vitello pointed out how impressive that accomplishment is considering the strength of the SEC.

“That’s a lot to take in,” Vitello said, via VolQuest’s Eric Cain. “That’s very difficult to do. Congrats to anybody in this league that finished with a winning record. It ain’t easy. And I think one thing that’s reflected with this week in Hoover is if you can finish in the top four, you’ve set yourself up pretty nicely. And Arkansas and [Texas] A&M have done that, and obviously Kentucky had a phenomenal year. It’s kind of weird how it worked out.

“I remember driving back from South Carolina and we finished in first place in the division (SEC East) in ‘21, I think, because Kentucky beat Vanderbilt. And then, you come to the park today and we were hoping [Vanderbilt’s] lefty [JD Thompson] could stick it on Kentucky because he threw very well against us. He was really good against us last week, and of course we have to do our job and win the game. And I’m proud of our guys. There wasn’t a lot of chatter about any of that stuff going on. I didn’t hear any scores or anything going like that. The guys were just focused on the task at hand. And if you do that, if you have the right approach, more times than not, the result will work itself out.”