Tennessee’s opportunity for a double-bye in the upcoming Southeastern Conference softball tournament was undone by a pair of sixth-inning errors Saturday afternoon that enabled Missouri to rally for a 4-3 triumph in Columbia.
It was Missouri’s first win over the Lady Volunteers since May 9, 2021.
“I don’t think we really followed the game plan today,” Tennessee coach Karen Weekly told reporters. “We saw three pitchers that we’ve seen in the last two days, and if we were in there doing what was asked of us, I think we would have had better success. The bottom line is that you can’t go off script.”
The 11th-ranked Lady Vols finished the regular season with a 42-9 record that includes a 16-8 mark in league play, which left them in a tie for fourth with Texas and Texas A&M. The highest-finishing common opponent in the three-way tiebreaker was 12th-place South Carolina, with Texas having swept the Gamecocks compared to Tennessee going 2-1 against them and Texas A&M 1-2.
Texas, therefore, will be the No. 4 seed and gets the fourth double-bye into Thursday’s quarterfinals, leaving the Lady Vols as the No. 5 seed and opening play at 5 p.m. Wednesday against Tuesday’s winner between South Carolina (30-25, 7-17) and 13th-seeded Ole Miss (32-23, 6-18).