The SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama this week looms large for Tennessee baseball.

The Vols, who dropped their fifth-straight SEC series at Arkansas this past weekend to end the a forgettable second half of the regular season, have some work to do to host a regional this postseason.

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Tennessee (41-15, 16-14 SEC) remains out of hosting contention in the latest D1Baseball Field of 64 projections for the NCAA Tournament.

The projections, released Sunday after the regular season ended, has the Vols going to the Atlanta Regional along with host and national 16-seed Georgia Tech, Arizona State and Columbia.

The regional is paired with the Austin Regional, hosted by No. 1 national seed Texas and where the Super Regional would potentially be played. The regional includes Dallas Baptist, Southern Cal and Houston Christian.

Tennessee, the defending College World Series champions, spent much of the season as a projected top eight seed, hosting both a regional and super regional on its path back to Omaha.

The Vols started to slide in those projections after their losing the first of six conference series over the last month and a half, beginning with two out of three losses to Texas A&M at Lindsey Nelson Stadium in early April.

Tennessee won all six of its remaining non-conference mid-week games, but series defeats to Kentucky, Auburn and Vanderbilt at home and then at Arkansas sends the Vols into the SEC Tournament in need of a run to potentially work its way back into hosting in the postseason.

Tennessee's last series win was at Ole Miss on April 13.

The SEC Tournament opens Tuesday and the Vols, who are the 8-seed, are slated to begin Wednesday against the winner of 9-seed Alabama and 16-seed Missouri (10:30 a.m. ET, SEC Network). The tournament is single-elimination.

Tennessee won its series against the Crimson Tide in the second weekend of league play in March, losing Game 1 before winning the next two.

A win would move the Vols in the quarterfinals against the league's regular season champion and 1-seed Texas on Thursday.

MORE FROM VOLREPORT: Where Tennessee baseball is seeded in SEC Tournament

Thirteen SEC teams are currently projected to make the postseason, according to D1Baseball, with Texas (1), Arkansas (2), Vanderbilt (3), Georgia (5), Auburn (6) and LSU (7) listed as national seeds.

Tennessee has hosted in the postseason in three out of the last four years, including its run to its first national championship in 2024, beating Northern Kentucky, Indiana and Southern Miss in the Knoxville Regional before topping Evansville in three games in Supers.

The Vols last played all of its postseason games on the road in 2023, sweeping the Clemson Regional and knocking off Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg Super Regional to reach the CWS for the second time in three years.

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