When the league expanded before the start of the 2012-13 season, basketball was expected to be one of the biggest winners. The year before, not only did Kentucky win the national championship, but incoming Missouri was 30-4 and a two seed out of the Big 12. They lost to Norfolk […]
Author: Will Shelton
A Word of Thanks in a Pandemic Year
It’s March, which means we’re just a handful of days from brackets, which means we’re just another handful of days from, “Every team in the tournament loses except one.” What we can say for sure about Tennessee’s season on March 2 is that they will make the NCAA Tournament, and […]
Is this a better/worse roller coaster than years past?
Tennessee needs that game with Florida to be rescheduled. Otherwise, what’s left for the Vols – at Vanderbilt, at Auburn, and a possible reschedule at South Carolina – provides little in the way of opportunity but plenty in the way of potholes on the road. In the 28 brackets released […]
The Home Stretch, in Context
The Vols improved to 15-5 (8-5) with a 93-73 win over South Carolina late Wednesday night, a welcome offensive explosion via Victor Bailey’s seven threes and a return to form from John Fulkerson. It’s Kentucky next (1:00 PM Saturday CBS); the Cats have won two straight close games over Auburn […]
Magic Numbers: Free Throws and Turnovers
I don’t think the highs and lows quite qualify as a roller coaster, but Tennessee’s basketball season is definitely on a winding road. The hope, of course, is that this thing is still going up the mountain: the Vols were the 11th-best team in college basketball in the eyes of […]
SEC Teams on the NCAA Seed Line
The committee will reveal their Top 16 this Saturday (12:30 PM CBS), a month and a day from Selection Sunday. As Wayne Staats points out, the original grouping usually holds up, for the most part. In 2018 the Vols were the top #4 seed in the first reveal, and ended […]
Tennessee 82 Kentucky 71: The Ceiling
Tonight was 20 minutes of everything you hate about Rupp Arena, then eight minutes of a really good basketball game, then 12 minutes of absolute joy. If you watched, you don’t need much analysis on the foul situation early. Six Tennessee players had two fouls in the first half, including […]
Looking for Consistency in Lexington
What we’re seeing from Tennessee right now is something we might’ve predicted at the start of the season, but a 10-1 flurry with the lone loss to hot-shooting Alabama made us believers in something more. Our program has little experience playing multiple freshmen heavy minutes, and mostly zero when two […]
How common was this kind of beat down?
When the Vols put it on Kansas Saturday evening, one of my first thoughts was, “Man, when’s the last time we blew out a good team like this?” When the name of the front of the jersey says KANSAS, it feels like it’s worth a little more. But the answer […]
Tennessee 80 Kansas 61 Yep
Well, that was satisfying. Whatever your experience of the last week or six weeks of uncertainty with Tennessee football, and the smidge of uncertainty that crept into this basketball team in losses to Florida and Missouri…this, tonight, was (Fulmerized) certain. Josiah-Jordan James hit a three at the 12:53 mark of […]