It was a big weekend for Tennessee baseball, and that might be putting it lightly. Badly needing to make some noise in conference play, Josh Elander’s group finally put a weekend together to sweep No. 9 Mississippi State.
“Massive turning point,” Elander said on Sunday. “It needs to be a mojo change for our guys to know wherever we go and play in this league we have a chance to be in the game. Got a little hairy there late, again, but the guys did good in the dugout to make sure and work through each
pitch and the next task.”
Tennessee moves to 24-12 overall with a 7-8 mark now in SEC play. The Volunteers climbed up to a tie for ninth in conference standings. More importantly, Tennessee made up some MAJOR ground in on the NCAA Tournament bubble. Buried at No. 45 in RPI coming into the weekend, Tennessee jumped all the way up to No. 28 following the sweep of Mississippi State.
The Volunteers have been on both sides of the NCAA Tournament bubble for a couple of weeks now, depending on where you look. After a big weekend, they’ve returned to the right side of that bubble, but they’re far from comfortable. On3 projects Tennessee as one of the last teams in the field, earning a No. 3 seed in the North Carolina (No. 6 national seed) regional.
Baseball America had Tennessee well out of the field last week. Other various outlets had the Volunteers hanging on to an at-large spot. Just imagine if they had held on to just half of those late-game blown leads.
Tennessee now moves on to a huge couple of weeks at home, set to host No. 25 Ole Miss this weekend and No. 11 Alabama next weekend. Capitalizing on last weekend’s momentum is a must for this group.
“We can’t get giddy,” Elander said. “We have to make sure that we looked at, ‘hey, what were the differences between the end of the games earlier in the year, versus how we handled this?’”
Tennessee will look to keep it rolling against UNC-Asheville tonight before diving back into conference play.
