SEC Baseball Standings and Kentucky's Path to NCAA, SEC tournament

SEC East has beaten up on SEC West a little this year, which is a bit surprising. It's mostly irrelevant for Kentucky, however, as it doesn't matter where they fall in the Division; what is important is how they fall overall. The winners of the East and West get top 2 seeds in the SEC tournament, but after that, you just line up and the top 12 teams make the SEC tournament. In effect, you only have to beat out 2 teams to make Hoover.

SEC West
Arkansas 13-5
Mississippi State 11-7
Ole Miss 10-8
Alabama 8-10
LSU 6-12
Texas A&M 5-13
Auburn 3-15

SEC East
Vanderbilt 13-5
Tennessee 12-6
Florida 11-7
South Carolina 11-7
Georgia 9-9
Kentucky 9-9
Missouri 5-13

Even though Kentucky is tied for next-to-last place in the SEC East, we are sitting in pretty good position to make the SEC tournament. Our schedule is difficult the remainder of the season, however.

Our SEC schedule remaining is as follows:

@ #4 Tennessee (3)
#14 Florida (3)
#13 South Carolina (3)
@ #2 Vanderbilt (3)

The baseball gurus suggest that it will take 14 SEC wins this season to make the NCAA tournament as a #3 seed. If that proves true, then we will need five more wins this season. Where do those come from?

I know it's easy to say, but looking at that schedule, in order, this weekend's series against Tennessee is critical. We simply have to have a win out of the series. Tennessee will be extremely motivated to continue their path toward a national seed, hosting not only a regional, but also a Super Regional if they progress that far.

Credit to Kentucky for winning the double-header this weekend against Alabama. I think our backs were against the wall after dropping the opening game, and we had to have a series win. Hopefully Kentucky will play like they did to win that double-header the rest of the season. Maybe that is the kickstart we needed.