I didn’t see most of the game today; maybe that was a blessing. I know we’ve spent a great deal of time over the last few weeks talking about brackets and No. 1 seeds; the only path Tennessee has left there is to hope the line about the selection committee not having time to care about Sunday games is fact and not fiction. But wherever the Vols end up now – No. 1 or No. 2, Louisville or Anaheim – they have nothing to do except look in the mirror.
And on that mirror, I’d write “Auburn”.
The Vols need to see themselves: a team that beat Gonzaga and Kentucky twice, spent four weeks at number one, can beat anybody and didn’t lose a single game outside Quad 1. They need to see the team that beat Kentucky on Saturday.
And they need to see Auburn, to be reminded that no one will give it to you.
Auburn is a good basketball team; on the right day, they’re a great team, and the numbers say they were plenty great today. Bruce Pearl is a great coach, we know. No one can take any of that from them.
But in both of Tennessee’s meetings with Auburn, we’re left looking back in that mirror. On the road, the Vols took the invitation to jack threes and came up four points short after a back-to-back stretch of their best basketball in beating Kentucky and Mississippi State. Today in Nashville, the Vols turned it over 17 times and surrendered 13 offensive rebounds. That’s thirty extra possessions. Auburn turned it over seven times, and the Vols had four offensive rebounds. You can do the math. And all of this happened after a back-to-back stretch of their best basketball in beating Mississippi State and Kentucky.
Both times, the Vols faced the Tigers feeling great about themselves, with a championship at stake. Both times, the Vols gave it away.
No one will give it to you.
This Tennessee team is good enough to take it. The lesson, now 34 games into this season and left at the championship altar twice, is you have to take it every night, every possession.
Failure to live that truth cost the Vols two rings.
There’s one ring left.
No one will give it to you. Tennessee has to look in the mirror and remember Auburn. And when they’ve taken a long, hard look at that, they’ll still see a team that is more than capable of taking it.
Keep getting better.
AMEN… a very difficult game to watch. Go Vols!
I made the drive from Memphis to see this one. The atmosphere outside and inside the arena in the lead up to the game was GREAT. It was 90% the right shade of orange, and it was LOUD. And even after getting blitzed for 30 minutes, when the Vols cut it to 15, it got LOUD again. The fans desperately wanted it. I certainly knew going in a loss was possible; a letdown is only natural after the emotional outburst of the game on Saturday. But getting blasted was not really something I considered. It was disappointing, but you’ve got… Read more »
I think if they lose in the second round, it will go on a list with 2001 LSU and, more recently, the second half of the 2016 football season. And people can say what they want about us hanging a Sweet 16 banner, but if they don’t make it there, this team won’t have any representation in the rafters at TBA, which would be really strange.
In the ride either to or from Nashville, my friend and I discussed this: it feels like the O/U on games to win to make the season truly memorable is 2.5.
Is that fair given that the school has only made one Elite 8 ever? Maybe not. But this team has done things we’ve never seen before, so I think it’s ok to raise the bar for what success looks like.