It was announced by the official Tennessee Baseball Twitter account on Wednesday that the Vols and the Commodores will not play their SEC Tournament second-round game in Hoover on Wednesday as scheduled.
The SEC Tournament schedule had Tennessee-Vanderbilt scheduled to play Thursday morning, however with inclement weather incoming on Wednesday night, the Vols and Commodores will now play the second game on Thursday, 30 minutes after the Texas A&M-Florida game, is now set to start at 2:30 p.m. CT (3:30 p.m. ET) on Thursday, weather permitting.
The SEC Tournament has been experiencing weather delays beginning on Tuesday with the Alabama-Georgia game being pushed back because of rain. This caused two of the four Tuesday games to be moved to Wednesday, pushing the other games back as well.
The current radar is calling for more rain throughout the week that could lead to more delays and even a change in the entire tournament.
Currently the Vols do not have an official scheduled time to play their game against Vanderbilt. More updates are to come.
What could happen
With all of the weather delays completely changing the schedule, the best option for the SEC would be to try and play a couple games on Thursday, then move the Saturday semi final games to Sunday morning, and use Friday and Saturday to try and catch up on games.
This would move the championship game back to late on Sunday, and force teams into playing a lot of baseball in a short amount of time, but it looks like it is the only option. Since Alabama and Arkansas already started the double elimination rounds, the tournament cannot go to single elimination without eliminating Arkansas and making them go home since they lost and have moved to the loser bracket.
When the Vols do finally open their SEC Tournament against the Commodores, Tennessee will send sophomore right-hander Blade Tidwell (2-1, 2.63 ERA) to the mound. The probable Vanderbilt starter will be junior right-hander Chris McElvain (5-4, 4.20 ERA).
The Vols are looking continue their season sweep over Vanderbilt after winning all three games in Nashville earlier in 2022.