COLLEGE STATION, Texas — The Arkansas baseball team will play either Alabama or South Carolina first at the SEC Tournament next week in Hoover, Ala.
The Razorbacks (43-12) are the No. 2 seed at the tournament by virtue of winning the SEC West. They will play the second quarterfinal game Wednesday at approximately 1 p.m.
The Crimson Tide and the Gamecocks will play a single-elimination game Tuesday at approximately 1 p.m.
Alabama (33-21) is the No. 7 seed after tiebreakers with four other teams that finished with an SEC record of 13-17. South Carolina (33-21) was also included in the tiebreaker and is the No. 10 seed.
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The Crimson Tide were the highest seeded of the five teams that were tied in the standings. That was because Alabama was the only team to win a series against the highest-seeded common opponent, top-seeded Tennessee.
South Carolina earned the No. 10 seed over LSU due to results against Arkansas. The Gamecocks went 1-2 against the Razorbacks on April 19-20, while Arkansas swept LSU in March.
The Razorbacks defeated South Carolina 2-1 in the series opener in Columbia, S.C. The Gamecocks won 6-3 in the first game of an April 20 doubleheader and Arkansas won the finale 9-6.
Alabama lost 5-3 to the Razorbacks in the series opener. The Crimson Tide won the final two games of the series by scores of 4-3 in 10 innings and 5-0. That series was played in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on April 12-14.
The Arkansas-Alabama-South Carolina grouping will be paired against a grouping of Kentucky-Georgia-LSU in the quarterfinal round.
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The Razorbacks will play at least two games in Hoover. The quarterfinals are a double-elimination round that are scheduled Wednesday through Friday.
The semifinal and final rounds revert to a single-elimination format.
SEC Tournament Schedule
Tuesday (First Round)
Game 1: No. 6 Georgia vs. No. 11 LSU
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Game 2: No. 7 Alabama vs. No. 10 South Carolina
Game 3: No. 8 Vanderbilt vs. No. 9 Florida
Game 4: No. 5 Mississippi State vs. No. 12 Ole Miss
Rex Nelson has been senior editor and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 2017, and he has a biweekly podcast called “Southern Fried.”
After graduating from Ouachita Baptist University in 1981, he was a sportswriter for the Arkansas Democrat for a year before becoming editor of Arkadelphia’s Daily Siftings Herald. He was the youngest editor of a daily in Arkansas at age 23. Rex was then news and sports director at KVRC-KDEL from 1983-1985.
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He returned to the Democrat as assistant sports editor in 1985. From 1986-1989, he was its Washington correspondent. He left to be Jackson T. Stephens’ consultant.
Rex became the Democrat-Gazette’s first political editor in 1992, but left in 1996 to join then-Gov. Mike Huckabee’s office. He also served from 2005-09 in the administration of President George W. Bush.
From 2009-2018, he worked stints at the Communications Group, Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities, and Simmons First National Corp.
Dylan Sherman is a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He is based in Northwest Arkansas and focuses on Tyson Foods Inc. and the transportation industry. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he has been with the newspaper since 2023.
