There is no easy way to lose one of these. If “easier” exists, maybe it’s what this one looked like for the first 30 minutes: some combination of not our day and the other team just being better. It happened to the other team to win 31 games in school […]

This Tennessee team talks a lot about the 2017 off-season as the launching point for their success. It first showed up on the floor against Purdue. November 22, 2017 really isn’t that long ago. But for Tennessee’s program, that day was about getting a neutral-site win over a ranked foe […]

Last year Tennessee was on the wrong side of a good story and a bad bounce, sending Loyola-Chicago to the Sweet 16 and the Vols to think about next year. For the first 20 minutes today, the Vols were the good story: total annihilation of Iowa, a can-you-top-this response to […]

When last we met, ’twas overtime in Dayton, and we started asking ourselves, “Can Josh Richardson – Josh Richardson – be the alpha for this team?” Five years and two coaches later, Josh Richardson is the leading scorer for the Miami Heat, and Tennessee is aiming to be the the alpha […]

Tennessee’s NCAA Tournament history goes something like this: after the field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the Vols didn’t make the Sweet 16 until 2000. With the turn of the century came better basketball: Tennessee played its way to the second weekend in 2000, 2007, 2008, 2010, and […]

The Raiders come to us from the Patriot League, where they started 13-10 (5-5). And then, bang: eight straight wins to finish the season, then a clean run through the conference tournament. Including all three Patriot League tournament games, Colgate won seven of its last eight by double digits. Before […]

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 […]

The Vols have beaten better Kentucky teams. John Wall and Demarcus Cousins in 2010. A Final Four squad with Jamal Mashburn in 1993. But I’m not sure a Tennessee win over Kentucky has ever meant as much; I know it hasn’t in my post-Ernie/Bernie lifetime. A lot of it is […]

It belongs in a museum. So, look. This is a year when hyperbole is available on a regular basis for Tennessee. Jordan Bowden’s dunk at Vanderbilt is one of the best I’ve ever seen by a Tennessee player. And it came at a crucial moment, with the Vols down five […]

How much of Gonzaga’s loss is everyone else’s gain? If the Zags are, in fact, a No. 2 seed now…they’re still almost certainly headed to Anaheim. With the Pac-12 looking like a one-or-two-bid league, none of the other contenders on the top two lines of the bracket are west of […]