No. 2 Texas faces No. 21 Tennessee in the SEC Tournament

The Horns are the No. 1 seed in their first-ever SEC Tournament, but the real focus is on what comes next.

“The bigger picture is still at hand and it’s my job to to have us ready next weekend.”

The Wednesday admission from head coach Jim Schlossnagle was telling about how the No. 2 Texas Longhorns will approach the program’s first SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala., entering the single-elimination tournament with the No. 1 seed after finishing 22-8 in conference play.

Picked to finish eighth in the preseason poll of the league’s coaches, Texas became the first SEC team to win the conference in its first season since the inaugural campaign in 1933, securing a projection as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

After receiving a double bye before facing the Tennessee Volunteers on Thursday at 3 p.m. Central on SEC Network at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, Texas enters the conference tournament as the projected No. 1 overall national seed for the NCAA Tournament, the ultimate focus for Schlossnagle.

The wide-angle approach by the first-year Texas head coach was made apparent by the decision to start redshirt sophomore left-hander Ethan Walker (1-0, 2.70 ERA) on Thursday — the Walters State transfer hasn’t started this season, but he has made four appearances in SEC games over the last month.

In the first three appearances, Walker was brought on to retire a left-handed batter, successfully accomplishing that task against Auburn, Texas A&M, and Arkansas, before stretching out to two hitless innings in Friday’s loss to Oklahoma, striking out three.

“We’ve earned the right to kind of navigate it as best we see fit for both this tournament and next weekend,” Schlossnagle said.

Part of that big-picture approach involves trying to get freshman left fielder Jonah Williams healthy again — he’s officially listed as questionable with a nagging hamstring injury — but the team’s overall health is largely trending in a position direction after junior right fielder Max Belyeu returned from his fractured thumb last week and sophomore second baseman Ethan Mendoza moved out of the designated hitter role he occupied for weeks because of a shoulder injury.

Even as the focus remains on the NCAA Tournament, Schlossnagle does preach an Opening Day mentality to his team for every game, so there’s still a focus on the goal of winning the tournament, a task made easier by the single-elimination format that demands much less of the top four teams that receive those double byes.

“We like to get championships. Any time there’s a trophy to be won, we sure would love to bring home,” Schlossnagle said.

In Hoover for the 26th straight year, Schlossnagle expects his team to rise to meet the atmosphere and maintain the attention to detail that produced an historic season that nonetheless won’t mean much without the type of postseason success that serves as the standard for the Longhorns.

“I do want us to play well, and I’d like to see us play clean baseball,” Schlossnagle said. “Whether that’s for one day or three days remains to be seen, but I can tell you, once our guys get down there and see the experience, they’re going to want to stay and to get a win and then have an off day and get to enjoy Hoover and the other games. Just being around the atmosphere, that’d be a great experience for our team.”

Texas arrived in Hoover on Wednesday, and to avoid a short stay, the Longhorns will have to get past the Volunteers and No. 1 starter Liam Doyle (9-3, 2.72 ERA), the SEC Pitcher of the Year. The Coastal Carolina and Ole Miss transfer has a 137-to-25 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 79.1 innings this season, holding opponents to a .171 batting average.

Tennessee survived a 15-10 slugfest against No. 23 Alabama on Wednesday, breaking open a 6-6 game with five runs in the sixth inning before adding four more runs in the eighth and surviving a long-shot comeback attempt from the Crimson Tide, who scored four runs in the ninth.

Behind 20 hits, including three three-hit performances, the 15 runs scored by the Volunteers marked the biggest offensive explosion for head coach Tony Vitello’s team since a midweek win in early March.

Neither team is familiar with each other without a prior regular-season matchup, and Thursday’s game marks only the fifth in the all-time series between the UTs.