IBTIT: Knoxville Regional Baseball Preview (May 31-June 3)

It's Playoff Baseball Time in Tennessee

Recently: Tennessee’s approach to the SEC Tournament last week was perfect, letting key players get their regular weekly work in while also learning who can contribute off the bench and from the pen in high-stakes situations. In the end, UT walked away from Hoover with a SEC Tournament trophy to go along with their regular-season hardware. The tourney win solidified Tennessee’s #1 overall seed for the NCAA tournament—a position some would say is more fraught than sought. But we’ll deal with that in a minute.

Meanwhile, the #2 and #4 seeds for the Knoxville Regional were also winning their league tournaments, Southern Miss in the Sun Belt and Northern Kentucky in the Horizon, respectively. The #3 seed, Indiana, made it to the Big 10 tournament semifinals before losing to eventual champ Nebraska.

Previously on Vols vs. Golden Eagles vs. Hoosiers vs. Norse: Obviously the one school here that Tennessee has a meaningful history with is Southern Miss, who the Vols beat in three games to win last year’s Super Regional on the way to Omaha. That series got heated between the fan bases in the runup to the game, as both sides believed their team had earned the right to host. The series itself was no less tense as the Vols and Eagles split a Sunday doubleheader (necessitated by heavy rains on Saturday) before home runs by Zane Denton and Maui Ahuna coupled with outstanding pitching from Drew Beam and Chase Burns powered Tennessee to a 5-0 series win. There are plenty of players on both teams that played key roles in that series, so expect that storyline to be featured if and when those two teams face off this weekend.

Tennessee has a 15-4 all-time record against the teams in this weekend’s regional. Here are each team’s overall historic records against each other:

Preview Graphic:

Depending on how conspiracy-theory minded you are, you might feel like this regional, featuring a Southern Miss team out for revenge after last year’s Super Regional, along with the possibility of playing Chase Burns and Wake Forest in the Supers, is a set-up. But the numbers don’t really bear that out. While USM’s #26 RPI seems pretty strong for a team paired with the #1 overall seed, consider the fact that every team UT beat in the SEC tournament has a RPI in the top 25. Also know that Tennessee’s pitching staff is the only staff in this regional with a sub-5.00 ERA. While no other team has two starters with an ERA under 4.00, the Vols have three. Looking at hitters, you have to drop down to numbers 7/8/9 on the list to find an Indiana or Southern Miss player among the best bats in the regional. In fact, the biggest threat to the Vols might come in game 1 against Northern Kentucky, who has multiple hitters with impressive numbers both for average and for power. If the Norse bats get hot Friday night and send Tennessee to the loser’s bracket, then the weekend gets thrown wide open.

That though, is still unlikely. The Vols have the highest probability (by far) of winning their regional according to the simulations run at warrennolan.com:

No other team has a probability to advance higher than 80%. And only Texas A&M has a higher than 75% probability to win their regional. All but one host is favored to win their regional (#13 Arizona at 38% trails Dallas Baptist’s 42%) while only two other hosts (#9 NC State at 48% and #10 Oklahoma at 49%) are below 50% probability to win theirs. Considering the Greenville Regional has the only 4-seed with a better than 4% chance to advance, don’t just assume that Wake Forest will be booking a trip to Knoxville next weekend. In fact, don’t assume just about anything.

We’re No. 1?

In 1999, Miami won the College World Series as the number 1 seed. Since then, no number 1 has won the CWS, and 10 of them (42%—including Tennessee in 2022) have failed to even reach Omaha. You will hear this fact repeated ad nauseum over the next few weeks, whether UT advances or not. You’ll hear it called a curse, but the reality is that this is an incredibly tough tournament to win. Thirteen of the champions (54%) since 2000 weren’t even nationally seeded. It’s rarely a chalky tournament, and likely won’t be any different this year. Eventually, though, just based on probabilities, the number 1 seed is going to have to win. Why not Tennessee, why not now?