KNOXVILLE — Peyton Manning took the University of Tennessee back near the top of college football, but the Volunteers didn’t win their second consensus national championship until Manning was an NFL rookie.

The Lady Vols softball program wouldn’t mind following that template in their first season since the departure of All-America pitcher Monica Abbott.

UT’s quest for a fourth consecutive Women’s College World Series berth — and first without Abbott in the circle — begins today in Knoxville. The 13th-ranked Lady Vols will play Winthrop at about 5 p.m., 30 minutes after Virginia Tech’s Hokies battle Louisville starting at 2:30 in an NCAA tournament regional.

The double-elimination pod will finish Sunday, sending a champion to battle the Ann Arbor Regional winner in a best-of-three super regional series next weekend.

“Different people across the country have told me that we might have the toughest regional in the country,” UT co-head coach Ralph Weekly said Thursday. “That’s not just me saying that. A lot of people, probably most people, thought Virginia Tech should have been a No. 1 seed. They might have deserved a No. 1 seed more than we did, but they’re the No. 2 in our region.

“It’s going to be a challenging weekend. We’re facing some of the premier pitchers in America, and (Virginia Tech’s) Angela Tincher might be the best.”

Winthrop (36-17) has some good pitchers, too. The Lady Eagles won the Big South tournament with the same dominant pitching they’ve had most of this season. They have allowed just 74 earned runs in more than 350 innings, good enough for a 1.47 team ERA.

“Winthrop was a No. 3 seed when they came here last year (for a regional), and this team is better than last year’s,” Weekly said. “Most of their best players are back from last year, and they really do look better.”

Virginia Tech and No. 3 seed Louisville also have played first-round weekends in Knoxville. The Hokies were seeded second and the Cardinals third to No. 1 seed UT in 2006; Virginia Tech also made a first-round stop in Knoxville in 2005.

The 16th-ranked Hokies (44-15) won the ACC tournament last weekend to become the league’s first back-to-back champions since Florida State in 2003-04.

Louisville (30-21) upset fourth-seeded Notre Dame in a Big East tournament quarterfinal last week, but top-seeded South Florida then edged the Cardinals, 2-1, in a semifinal.

UT (47-14) has lost four games to No. 1 Florida in the past 13 days, the latest 6-1 in an SEC tournament semifinal in Baton Rouge, La. Two of the losses came by one run, which co-head coach Karen Weekly called “frustrating and encouraging at the same time.”

“Every team in the country could be playing better, and we’re no different,” Ralph Weekly added.

“For us to lose six seniors from last year — one of them being Monica Abbott, who might be the best pitcher in the history of the college game — this team has worked hard to win 47 games,” he said. “We knew going in that this was going to be a rebuilding year, with all of our inexperience in the circle. ... But now, our mindset is to just win.

“How far we go depends on how well we do in the circle. Sometimes we’ve been good there, and sometimes we haven’t. We have to be consistent now, or we won’t be around very long.”

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