Tennessee baseball earned a bid to its seventh straight NCAA Tournament.
The Vols (38-20) are a No. 2 seed and will play in the Chapel Hill Regional, hosted by No. 1 seed North Carolina (45-11-1), the No. 5 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. Tennessee’s first game will come against No. 3 seed East Carolina (36-22-1) on May 29. North Carolina will play No. 4 seed VCU (37-23).
Regionals will be played May 29-June 1 and best-of-three super regionals will be either June 5-7 or June 6-8. The College World Series at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska, starts June 12 and the finals are slated for June 20-22.
This is Tennessee’s first season under coach Josh Elander, who took over for Tony Vitello in October after Vitello left to become the manager of the San Francisco Giants. Elander was a familiar face within the program, serving as an assistant on Tennessee’s staff through all eight years of Vitello’s tenure.
Elander’s 38 wins are the most for a first-year head coach in Tennessee history, surpassing the previous record of 29. An appearance in the regional final would give Tennessee its seventh straight full season with at least 40 wins.
Deep NCAA Tournament runs became routine for the Vols under Vitello. They advanced to super regionals in each of the past five seasons and made the College World Series in 2021, 2023 and 2024, winning the first national championship in program history in 2024.
Last season, Tennessee won the Knoxville Regional before being swept by Arkansas in the Fayetteville Super Regional.
This is just the second time in the last six seasons Tennessee isn’t hosting a regional, the last coming in 2023 when the Vols won the Clemson Regional and then advanced to the College World Series by winning the Hattiesburg Super Regional.
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee baseball heads to Chapel Hill Regional for NCAA Tournament as No. 2 seed