What Tony Vitello, Vols, said after securing a share of the conference title

Elsewhere, Vanderbilt defeated Kentucky 12-4 on the road. With the loss, Kentucky finishes the regular season tied atop the Southeastern Conference standings with Tennessee, as both sport identical 22-8 records. Tennessee and Kentucky are co-SEC champions, but the Vols will enter the conference tournament next week as the 1-seed, due to owning the tiebreaker thanks to a series win.

It's the fifth conference championship for Tennessee in program history and the first since 2022. Saturday's events also secured the ninth SEC East Divisional title in program history, the first again since 2022. The Vols will be looking to secure their fifth ever SEC Tournament championship in their 20th appearance in Hoover and only the second as the No. 2 seed in its current format. Tennessee has now won the SEC East title for the third time in the past four seasons.

Since the Volunteers are the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, Tennessee will open play in the afternoon session on Wednesday in Hoover - around 5:30 pm eastern time for the third game of the day. The Wednesday contest will be televised on the SEC Network.

What Tony Vitello said on an SEC Championship

"Yeah, I mean that's a lot to take in. That's very difficult to do. Congrats to anybody in this league that finished with a winning record. It ain't easy. And I think one thing that's reflected with this week in Hoover is if you can finish in the top four, you've set yourself up pretty nicely. And Arkansas and [Texas] A&M have done that, and obviously Kentucky had a phenomenal year. It's kind of weird how it worked out. I remember driving back from South Carolina and we finished in first place in the division (SEC East) in '21, I think, because Kentucky beat Vanderbilt. And then, you come to the park today and we were hoping [Vanderbilt's] lefty [JD Thompson] could stick it on Kentucky because he threw very well against us. He was really good against us last week, and of course we have to do our job and win the game. And I'm proud of our guys. There wasn't a lot of chatter about any of that stuff going on. I didn't hear any scores or anything going like that. The guys were just focused on the task at hand. And if you do that, if you have the right approach, more times than not, the result will work itself out."

What Zander Sechrist said on an SEC Championship

"I'm blessed enough to have been a part of this for a while now, so it's just another thing under the belt. And obviously we got Hoover coming up, which is just a fun place to be at 'cause there's a Dave & Buster's to the left of the hotel. I still have my card from freshman year and it's connected to a mall with some Chick-fil-A, about every option you can think of. So it'll be fun to go back to Hoover."

"It just feels good. It feels good. It feels like I got my confidence back a little bit at least. But obviously, you know, like I said, baseball's a weird game. You got to take the highs and the lows, so obviously we'll just go back to the drawing board and see what worked today. And then we'll compare it to that Georgia start, 'cause they're similar. Except one had seven (strikeouts), one had four. And then one had one walk, one didn't. But then we can reevaluate the Vandy and Florida, and put them together, and then we can just get a good combination of each." 

What Cal Stark said on an SEC Championship

"You know, it's always a good feeling being at the top. So we were all in there [film room], jumping around, cheering, hollering - that's our first goal that we got. We got a couple more left that keep striving towards.

"The best fans in the country. They fill this place up every single weekend, whether it's the first weekend of the season or the last. So, it's really easy to play in front of these guys and girls. Very easy to play in front of this fan base. And especially whenever we're winning. We feel their energy and they're kind of willing us to win the ballgame. So, it's like I said, you can't say enough good things about this fan base for every sport, not just baseball."