By: Robert Craft

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

64 NCAA Tournament teams will be announced next Monday, and the SEC is in position to grab up to 10 of the 16 Regional host sites and six of the eight national seeds.

Heading into conference tournaments, these seven teams have all but locked up a top eight seed, which means home-field advantage all the way through the Super Regionals. Teams are in order of RPI, not projected seed.

Georgia (1)

Auburn (2)

Vanderbilt (3)

Texas (4)

Arkansas (5)

LSU (8)

Teams on the hosting bubble.

Alabama (9)

Florida (13)

Tennessee (16)

Ole Miss (18)

Some notes on the bracket hopefuls: Alabama’s RPI is very strong, but the Crimson Tide have only two series wins against Tournament-caliber teams (Oklahoma and Georgia).

Florida went 15-15 in the SEC, but six of those wins came against South Carolina and Missouri. On a positive note, the Gators won series vs. Texas (on the road) and Arkansas.

Tennessee went 16-14 in the SEC and lost their last five series.  They have one of the weakest non-conference schedules (216).Tennessee has joined a long list of defending national champions that have struggled, relatively speaking, the following season.

Only one of the last 10 national champs, 2017 Florida, was a top eight seed the following season (the Gators were No. 1 overall). Four of the other nine were hosts but not top eight seeds, and four failed to make the tournament.

Florida miraculously ended its 2025 regular season .500 in Southeastern Conference play after opening 1-11 against league squads, capping off the turnaround with a series victory over Alabama at home on Saturday [W 7-6; L 6-9; W 9-3] and securing the No. 10 seed in the upcoming SEC Tournament.

Vanderbilt, the 2019 champs, did not have an opportunity to defend its title due to the pandemic. The Commodores were the No. 4 overall seed in 2021.

Vanderbilt enters the postseason as one of the hottest teams in the country. The Commodores won their final five SEC games — many in dramatic fashion — to finish 39-16 overall and 19-11 in the SEC.

Vanderbilt swept Kentucky in Nashville over the weekend, winning the first two games on back-to-back walk-off home runs. Outfielder Braden Holcomb, down to his final strike with two outs, hit a three-run blast to give Vanderbilt an 8-7 win.

Then, after Kentucky rallied from down 7-5 at the top of the ninth to take an 8-7 lead, shortstop Jonathan Vastine hit a two-run home run with one out to walk off the Cats once again.

These heroics were nothing new for Vanderbilt. Two weeks earlier, the Dores rallied from down 7-2 in the eighth to beat Alabama with a two-run Holcomb homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

For Kentucky, it was a painful ending to a regular season that featured eight SEC losses by one run and another three by two runs.

At 29-23 overall and 13-17 in the SEC with an RPI of 36, the Cats head to the SEC Tournament on the NCAA Tournament bubble. They play Oklahoma on Tuesday.

The SEC will be well represented and this year‘s College Baseball World Series tournament. It’s just a matter of who will host and who will travel.

I predict four SEC teams will make it to Omaha and one will be crowned national champion.