Tennessee baseball wins share of 2024 SEC regular-season championship

Tennessee baseball won a share of the 2024 SEC regular-season title on the final day of the regular season with a 4-1 win over South Carolina and a little help from Vanderbilt, who upset No. 2 Kentucky, 12-4. The Vols entered Saturday a game behind the Wildcats in the SEC standings, needing to complete the sweep of the Gamecocks while the Commodores avoided being swept in Lexington.

It’s the second time in the last three seasons that the Vols have won at least a share of the SEC regular-season title and it’s the fifth time in program history that it’s done so. Tennessee last won it in 2022, while the last time UT won prior to Tony Vitello’s tenure was in 1995.

“That’s very difficult to do,” Vitello said afterwards. “Congrats to anybody in this league that finished with a winning record. It ain’t easy.

“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.”

Tennessee also won the SEC East in the final year of the division’s existence with its win over South Carolina and the Kentucky loss. UT has now won the East three out of the last four years and nine times in program history. It last won the division before Vitello in 1997.

The Volunteers will be the No. 1 overall seed in next week’s SEC Baseball Tournament following their productive day to end the regular season. They’ll open in Hoover, Ala. on Wednesday afternoon in the third game of the day against the winner of Tuesday’s game between the No. 8-seed and No. 9-seed. First pitch for the Vols will be at 5:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.

“It takes a village, especially if you’re kind of coming from– we’re pretty blessed, so there’s no sympathy needed – but it’s not like we have the biggest stadium or the best tradition or this or that,” Vitello said. “In order to make progress, like I said, it takes a village and there’s an awful lot of people that have helped.

“We appreciate that. We recognize that. We don’t take it for granted and it’s nice when the guys can celebrate it.”

Tennessee left-handed pitcher Zander Sechrist delivered one of his best starts of the season to lead UT to the win in the finale. Sechrist completed a career-high six scoreless innings to pick up the win and improve to 2-1. He didn’t allow a walk, gave up just four hits and struck out four. He threw 65 pitches, 47 of which were strikes.

It was a relatively quiet afternoon for the Tennessee offense despite tallying nine hits. UT managed to score just four runs, one of which was scored in the fourth, while the final three were scored in the fifth.

Kavares Tears produced the Vols’ run in the fourth to give them a 1-0 lead. Tears hit an RBI double to score Hunter Ensley all the way from first after Ensley walked with two outs.

Tennessee scored three runs on five hits in the fifth after Dalton Bargo led off the inning with a single to left field. Christian Moore, Blake Burke, Billy Amick and Dylan Dreiling proceeded to hit four consecutive singles to extend the lead to 4-0 at the time.

Burke, Amick and Dreiling all drove in a run with their base knocks. The inning proved to be the difference in the win.