re: SEC Baseball Tournament - Tennessee 8 Florida 5 Final - Vols SEC Tourney Champs!

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Need a preview of coming attractions on the road to Omaha? The latest RPI ratings might help. The past 12 national champions were all in the top 21 on tournament selection day.

And so, 21 numbers from the RPI top-21 club, now that the regular season is over and serious business begins.

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137: Tennessee home runs, the most in college baseball since the BBCOR bat era dawned in 2011. The Vols also own a gaudy 49-7 record and the lowest earned run average in the nation by a ton; 2.37 with the next best back in the fog at 3.08. Any Omaha conversation must begin with a program that has never won a national championship and whose only runner-up finish was 71 years ago. But then there’s the Top Seed Curse to face. Tennessee will likely be the No. 1 seed for the NCAA Tournament and that honor has historically been like swimming in a lake with an anvil tied to your ankles. The last No. 1 seed to win the title was Miami — 23 years ago.

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16-4: The combined score of the three-game broom job Tennessee put on Vanderbilt in April, back when the Commodores had hit a lull. But it’s May, and they know how to look at a calendar in Nashville. All five Vanderbilt CWS appearances in history have come since 2011. And the Commodores have the most accomplished thief in the land. Enrique Bradfield Jr. has stolen 42 bases, and nobody has caught him yet

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62: Introducing the Sonny DiChiara Show at Auburn. See the first baseman hit (.382 average). See him keep the line moving (.561 on-base percentage, tied for best in the nation). See him walk (62 times, most in the country, with a chance at the school season record of 73, held by a future Hall of Famer named Frank Thomas). DiChiara was at Samford until this year, but it somehow seemed inevitable he’d wear an Auburn uniform. His mother Lara was a Diamond Doll, one of the hostesses for the Tigers baseball program.

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3: How ‘bout them old Dawgs? The first three hitters in the Georgia lineup are all graduate students. There’s a fourth later in the batting order.

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.421, 28, 85: What does a .421 average, 28 home runs and 85 RBI get you? Nearly a national triple crown for Texas’ Ivan Melendez. He leads in homers, is one percentage point off the best batting average and is only four back in RBI.

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