Tennessee knocks off Oklahoma in penultimate game of SEC season
The Oklahoma baseball team won't be heading into the SEC Tournament going in the right direction, it appears.
A rainy night in Oklahoma City on Friday pushed the Sooners' into Saturday before a winner could be determined in OU's penultimate game of the regular season against Tennessee. Unfortunately for Oklahoma, the rain washed away the team's bats as the Volunteers won, 9-4, in a game that was postponed in the bottom of the seventh inning Friday and resumed Saturday at 1 p. m.
OU's loss combined with Kentucky's loss and Vanderbilt's win created a three-way tie in the Southeastern Conference standings with all three teams sitting at 13-16 with one game apiece left before next week's SEC Tournament. None of the three teams can catch the next teams up in the standings, Tennessee and Ole Miss, meaning they'll finish in some combination of 11th, 12th and 13th in the final standings. The bottom eight seeds all must play a first-round game, while No.
5 through No. 8 seeds get an automatic bye into the second round and the top four seeds automatically qualify for the quarterfinals. The good news for Oklahoma is that Friday/Saturday's loss likely doesn't alter their NCAA Tournament plans.
The Sooners will make it and had largely been considered eliminated from hosting duties a few weeks ago. Still, OU will want to get its bats going next week before the NCAAs. After scoring three runs in the first, Oklahoma didn't put another runner into scoring position until the sixth inning against the Vols.