OMAHA, Neb. – No surprise here, but the national championship winning Tennessee Volunteers top the final Baseball America rankings that were released Tuesday afternoon, a day following UT’s 6-5 Game 3 win over Texas A&M in the College World Series Finals.
The Vols (60-13) finished the season with the first national championship in program history and became the first team from the Southeastern Conference to eclipse the 60-win marker in a single season. Tennessee went an impressive 10-2 in the NCAA Baseball Tournament and snapped the ‘curse’ of No. 1 overall seeds not winning the title, a streak that went back to Miami in 1999.
Tennessee’s 60 wins are the most of any team since Florida State in 2002 and the most of any national champion since Wichita State in 1989.
Texas A&M, who finished a win shy of a national championship, came in at No. 2 in the rankings while Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida State rounded out the top-five. Florida, NC State, Virginia, Oregon State and Georgia concluded the top-10.
Other teams from the SEC include No. 15 Arkansas and No. 17 Mississippi State. Oklahoma, who Tennessee lost to in the opening weekend of play in the Children’s Shriners Invitational, finished at No. 19. Evansville, who the Vols edged to win the Knoxville Super Regional, concluded the season as the No. 23 ranked program.
The Vols boast an impressive record of 16-6 versus the Baseball America top-25 programs to end the 2024 campaign.
It was the second straight trip to the College World Series in Omaha for Tennessee (60-13), the third in four years and the first time the Vols played for a national title since their first trip there in 1951.
Vitello has rewritten the Tennessee Baseball record books, leading the country the last four seasons in wins (211), win percentage (.773), NCAA Tournament wins (25) and home runs (566).
The Vols won everything they could this season, winning the SEC’s regular-season championship, the SEC Tournament championship, Knoxville Regional and Knoxville Super Regional.
The team lost back-to-back games on March 16 and 17, then never lost back-to-back games again. They went 7-0 while facing elimination in the SEC Tournament and NCAA Tournament, including coming back from down 0-1 in the best-of-three College World Series championship series against Texas A&M.
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