Zander Sechrist got to the top of the mound and stopped.

The Tennessee baseball happy handshake line was underway but Sechrist wasn't ready to join it. The senior pitcher turned away and gently ran his foot across the rubber.

"It just feels good," Sechrist said.

Sechrist is a longtime staple of the Vols pitching staff. He wore the label of midweek starter for two seasons. He took on the title of weekend starter in effectively an opening role this season.

On a championship Saturday, Sechrist was more than an opener or a weekend starter. He was precisely the pitcher Tennessee needed to catapult to an SEC title on the regular season's final day.

Sechrist threw six scoreless innings, blanking South Carolina and doing it better than any other Vols pitcher during the series sweep at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. He allowed four hits and struck out four without walking any in a 4-1 win. Vols coach Tony Vitello chose the word phenomenal to describe the start. Determined was the word Vitello selected to describe Sechrist the pitcher.

That is how you rise into a position that was outside your grasp in prior seasons and wasn't initially intended to be yours in your last one.

That's what made what Sechrist did Saturday against the Gamecocks all the more exceptional. The pitcher who was destined to be a midweek starter and a bullpen left-handed option for the third year in a row took the ball in a game that would decide if Tennessee could be SEC champions. He owned it.

"I would say out of the three (weekend starters), the one guy that showed right out of the gate that he was going to throw that thing with conviction and that he was going to hunt down strike one was Zander," Vitello said.

Sechrist made weekend starts in the first two weekends of the season before settling back into the Tuesday role again. He never sulked nor resigned himself to forever being in that spot. He moved into the third weekend spot in the second week of SEC play. He stepped up with expected No. 1 starter AJ Russell sidelined for the past two months.

He has been imperative to No. 1 Tennessee (46-10, 22-8 SEC), which opens play in the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama, on Wednesday (5:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network) against the winner between No. 8 seed Vanderbilt and No. 9 seed Florida.

It hasn't always looked pretty. It was beautiful at Georgia on March 31 when Sechrist also threw six scoreless innings with seven strikeouts against one the nation's heftiest offenses. It was unpleasant at Vanderbilt a week before facing South Carolina (33-21,13-17).

Sechrist got back to the drawing board. He had to regain proper location and attack hitters. He kept developing, which is a trademark of his career. He had to get it right.

“I just wanted to go out on a high note after starting a lot of Tuesdays here," Sechrist said.

There's nothing wrong Tuesday starts, the Georgia native stressed.

There is even a fondness in thinking of those midweek moments. That was fondness in Sechrist's thoughts Saturday as he toed the rubber before entering the celebration − the celebration his start made possible.

Mike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at michael.wilson@knoxnews.com and follow him on Twitter @ByMikeWilson. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Zander Sechrist's rise reaches top as Tennessee baseball wins SEC title