SEC Tournament Day Five Recap: Championship game is set

As the SEC Tournament nears its finish, four teams entered Saturday intending to win an SEC Championship still at hand. But after Saturday, a new champion will be crowned.

In case you missed any of the semi-final action, here is a recap of both games.

No.4 Vanderbilt and No.8 Tennessee 

It was death by a thousand cuts Saturday for Tennessee, which had no answer for Vanderbilt’s aggressive and strategic offensive approach. On a day when the wind played a factor in an already big ballpark. The Commodores scored 10 runs on 13 hits to run-rule in-state rival Tennessee 10-0.

It was all Vanderbilt this morning in Hoover, as it run-ruled Tennessee 10-0 to punch its ticket to the SEC title. Rustan Rigdon, Riley Nelson and Mike Mancini all had 2 RBIs, while on the mound Cody Bowker struck out 9 across 4 shutout innings.
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— Peter Flaherty III (@PeterGFlaherty) May 24, 2025

When a team scores that many runs and that many hits, most people would think there was a combination of singles, extra base hits and home runs. In this case, Vanderbilt did all its damage on 13-singles- no extra base hits, just singles.

“We don’t try to do too much at the plate. We try to stick to our approach using the whole field,” said Vanderbilt first baseman Riley Nelson.“We pride ourselves on not trying to swing for the fences because at this park and parks going forward, that’s not going to work, so that’s kind of what we stuck to.”

Nelson got it going with an RBI single in the first and drove in the 10th run in the bottom of the sixth. 

On the other side, the Commodore pitching staff was great again, starting with starter Cody Bowker. After walking the first two batters of the game, Bowker struck out six of the next seven, setting the tone for the rest of the game. He finished with nine on the day.

“I was trying to be too perfect. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to just do everything I possibly could, and my mindset flipped when [Colin] Barczi came out to me like, wait a second, I’m doing it for all the guys behind me, and I don’t have to be perfect,” Bowker said. 

He would go another three innings before handing the ball off to Connor Fennell, who finished the game. While Fennell is the usual Sunday starter, coach Tim Corbin wanted him to continue piggybacking off of Bowker. 

“We knew that next week we weren’t playing next week, but we knew that Fennell needed some time. The score didn’t matter. At the point that he came in, it was 7-0,” Corbin said. 

 “That’s a dangerous team on the other side. We knew that. We understand that. It was just about winning a ballgame. We felt like Cody had reached his spot, Fennell was going to come in at that point.”

It is now the third time in four games the Commodores have come out victorious against the Volunteers, something Nelson and others take very seriously – calling the rivalry “the best in college baseball.”

“It’s awesome. We don’t like those guys, they don’t like us. I think it’s the best rivalry in college baseball right now. If you’re a young kid getting recruited by both of these schools, I think you know which school you should choose,” Nelson said.

No.3 LSU and No.7 Ole Miss

For the first time since 2022, the LSU Tigers were shut out in a game, losing 2-0 to the Ole Miss Rebels Saturday afternoon. This Hotty Toddy pitching staff continues to shine under the Hoover Met lights with another masterful performance on the mound. 

The Rebels handed the ball to freshman Cade Townsend on this semi-final Saturday to slow down a dangerous LSU lineup. 

Luckily for everyone wearing blue and red, they watched a pitcher do more than that. How about a career-high 4.2 innings of shutout baseball, allowing just three hits and striking out three. 

“A lot of kudos to Cade [Townsend] and the start which he deserves,” said Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco.

After getting the first two outs in the fifth, but his pitch count was up to 75, Bianco pulled Townsend. As he walked off the field, the Ole Miss crowd gave him a standing ovation for his efforts. 

A nice standing O from the @OleMissBSB fans in attendance & for rightful reason@cadetownsendmlb was absolutely filthy in his outing today for the Rebs pic.twitter.com/LQCHiSmBJJ

— Jack DeLongchamps (@JDelongchamps) May 24, 2025

The ball was handed off to Gunnar Dennis for the first time this week, and like everyone before him, he did his job. Dennis pitched a clean 2.1 innings with two strikeouts, and got Ole Miss to the eighth still leading 2-0. 

Still holding onto a 2-0 lead and heading into the ninth, a song Metallica wrote 34-years ago hits the speakers, and the words to Enter Sandman  start to play. Which only means one thing – it is Connor Spencer time. 

“It’s really comforting, especially seeing [Spencer] jog out of the bullpen. “Enter Sandman” comes on; that’s freaking sweet. It’s cool. It’s a cool song and it gets me pumped up, and I know it gets him pumped up, too, but not only that, he’s really good up there,” said Ole Miss first baseman Will Furniss.

Even with it being Spencer’s third appearance in three games. He still had a job to go out there and close things out for Ole Miss. After retiring the first two, he issued a two-out walk, bringing the tying run to the plate. 

With the entire stadium on its feet, cheering L-S-U or Let’s Go Rebels, Spencer dialed in and got the final out. Securing his third save this week and sending Ole Miss to its first SEC title game since 2019.

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“Those are the kind of moments that I really live for as a closer. I feel like that’s kind of where I thrive, the last three outs of the game,” Spencer said postgame.

Championship Sunday

On Tuesday, the field was 16 teams, now we are down to the final two. Seventh-seed Ole Miss will face four-seed Vanderbilt in the SEC Championship Game on Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2