The University of Tennessee baseball season ended on the wrong side of a must-win game Saturday at Missouri.
In the regular-season finale for two teams vying for the last spot in the Southeastern Conference tournament, Missouri won 8-3 over the Volunteers (29-27, 12-18) and their first-year coach, Tony Vitello.
Still, the 12 league wins matched the program's highest total since 2014. The last time Tennessee won more than 12 SEC games in a season was 2007.
Most years, a 12-win league campaign would be good enough to qualify for the 12-team SEC tournament, but the league standings were tightly packed this season.
Tennessee loses senior catcher Benito Santiago and senior center fielder Brodie Leftridge to graduation but could bring nearly every other key contributor back for Vitello's second season.
Pitchers Will Neely and Zach Linginfelter are eligible for next month's major league draft. Tennessee's signing class, ranked No. 6 in the country by Perfect Game, also includes a handful of players likely to be selected in the draft.
Those players will have decisions to make.
Tennessee left eight runners on base and committed three errors in Saturday's loss. Things unraveled for the Vols in the seventh inning as Missouri turned a tie game into a sizable Tigers advantage.
Neely, Tennessee's starting pitcher, was tagged with the loss after running into trouble in the seventh.
Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidWCobb and on Facebook at facebook.com/volsupdate.