Author Archives: Will Shelton

A thrilling comeback made for a thrilling game, but Kentucky used a pair of offensive rebounds to turn a 62-61 Tennessee lead with five minutes to play into an advantage they would never relinquish. Jordan Bone’s corner pocket three cut the lead back to one with 1:26 to go, but the story of the day was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and he buried a step-back jumper in reponse. SGA had 29 points on 10-of-16 shooting, and the Vols had no answer for the game’s best player. He kept the Cats in front at the end, and Kentucky wins the SEC Tournament 77-72.

The Vols were dead and buried before Admiral Schofield knocked down three threes late in the first half, trimming a 17-point Kentucky lead to five at the break. Schofield, who left the game for a few minutes in the second half after a loose ball scramble knocked him to the floor, had 22 points and 10 rebounds.

But it wasn’t enough to overcome SGA and 7-of-16 from the arc from the Wildcats, who go to 23-3 when shooting better than 29% from three. This game had the feeling of a second weekend tournament affair, and both teams should feel confident about their ability to get there.

We’ll find out the path at 6:00 PM ET; Tennessee’s should still go through Nashville.

On Friday, the Vols won an out-of-character contest against Mississippi State despite season highs in turnovers, missed free throws, and shots blocked. On Saturday, the pendulum swung.

Against Arkansas, the Vols hit 11-of-17 from the arc, a season-high 64.7%. Jordan Bone, James Daniel, and Lamonte Turner splashed three each, and Admiral Schofield added two others. The Vols jumped out to a 6-0 lead, then Daniel and John Fulkerson unleashed a 10-0 run at the eight minute mark to put the Vols up 17. That’s the sentence you were expecting to read, I know.

It was 19 at halftime on the strength of 19-of-25 from the floor in the first 20 minutes, an unbelievable 76%. That sort of fire can’t last, but Tennessee’s defense and excellent free throw shooting made sure Arkansas got no closer than 11 in the second half.

The win puts Tennessee in good position to earn a trip to Nashville for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. The Vols are eighth in RPI and putting on a good show in St. Louis, while teams from the Big Ten take the week off. And I wouldn’t rule out a No. 2 seed just yet, especially with a win tomorrow.

And tomorrow, a special piece of history will be on the table.

The Vols haven’t won the SEC Tournament since 1979. LSU won the league that year, but Tennessee beat Kentucky twice in the regular season, then took down the Cats in overtime in the tournament finals. Appropriately, it is Kentucky who will stand between Rick Barnes’ squad and a bigger slice of immortality tomorrow.

This team already has a piece of that pie, having won the SEC regular season championship. And, like everyone else, its ultimate destiny will be decided over the next few weeks. But not only does it have a chance to do something truly special tomorrow, it is also playing its best basketball in the present.

I thought we might have seen it the last time we faced Kentucky at Rupp Arena. Then I thought we saw it in Starkville two weeks ago. You can’t expect to shoot 76% every night or 65% from the arc, no doubt. But Rick Barnes’ team is relentlessly committed to improvement. The Vols have won 16 of their last 19 games. They are up to 11th in KenPom. They just keep getting better.

And they will need to in order to earn a three-game sweep of Kentucky. The game in Rupp Arena was as even as any I’ve seen, both in the box score and in its flow. The entire contest was played within one possession other than a four-point Tennessee lead that lasted 10 seconds. Tennessee won because they made the plays at the end of the game, including two of their nine steals on the night. The Vol defense was opportunistic against Arkansas today as well.

Kentucky isn’t a complicated animal: they’re 22-3 when shooting better than 29% from the arc, 1-7 when they don’t. We’ve seen both sides of that coin: they were 3-of-14 (21.4%) at Rupp, but did shoot 7-of-19 (36.8%) in Knoxville and still lost.

The Vols will need to dodge the kind of shooting performance we saw from Kentucky and Wenyen Gabriel today, and keep Kentucky’s size off the offensive glass and away from the foul line. Rick Barnes, who is 4-2 against Kentucky at UT, always uses undersized bigs like Armani Moore and Admiral Schofield to attack Kentucky; Schofield’s 16 shot attempts were the most for any Vol at Rupp, and I would expect something similar again tomorrow.

There is already so much to celebrate with this team, and so much still ahead of it no matter what happens tomorrow. This one will get to stand on its own, as Kentucky stands in their way one more time.

1:00 PM ET, ESPN. Wear your orange to church.

Go Vols.

If last night felt weird, that’s because it was:

• 33.3% from the field was Tennessee’s second-lowest shooting performance of the season.
• 60.7% from the free throw line was Tennessee’s second-worst performance of the season, barely beating a 6-of-10 night against LSU. Eleven missed free throws were a season high.
• Twenty offensive rebounds was a season high, by far. The Vols had 16 against Purdue and North Carolina (a good sign that the Vols can hang on the offensive glass when playing teams with tremendous size).
• Seventeen turnovers tied a season high (Wake Forest).
• Mississippi State had one assist. One. That’s unheard of, and is obviously a season high for Tennessee’s defense. The fewest assists for a previous opponent was six…also from Mississippi State.
• Eight blocked shots for Mississippi State is the most any team has scored against the Vols this year. The Bulldogs’ size again clearly affected Grant Williams, and this time Tennessee wasn’t nearly as clean in running the rest of their offense.

But…we won. And today’s game should be much more pleasing to the eye.

Way back on December 30, Tennessee played 36 of its best minutes of the year. The Vols led Arkansas 70-61 in Fayetteville with 3:53 to go. Twenty seconds later, Grant Williams picked up his fourth foul. And then, chaos.

Arkansas scored 61 points in the game’s first 36 minutes, then 34 points in the last four minutes of regulation and five minutes of overtime. A frustrating component in several of Tennessee’s losses – a preventable turnover in the final minutes – really sparked the Arkansas rally: splashing a three, getting a steal, and getting a layup turned an eight point game into a one possession affair. The Vols still had a chance to win with 18 seconds left in regulation, but Jordan Bone only hit one of two free throws and the game went to overtime. Williams fouled out at the end of regulation and Admiral Schofield followed in the first minute of overtime. With Tennessee’s defense fundamentally altered by foul trouble, Arkansas exploded. Daryl Macon finished with 33 points, Jaylen Barford with 28.

Offensively, the Arkansas game was Tennessee’s best scoring performance from its guards: 21 from Jordan Bone, 17 from James Daniel, and 10 from Lamonte Turner. But that’s not Tennessee’s best basketball: we should see the Vols again try to play more through Williams and Schofield inside-out today.

As advertised, Arkansas has an incredibly efficient offense. The Razorbacks shoot 40.1% from the arc, 12th nationally. And they only turn it over on 15.2% of their possessions, 17th nationally, this despite playing the 28th-fastest pace in college basketball. Tennessee dictated the tempo for those first 36 minutes of the previous encounter, Arkansas for the last nine.

The Razorbacks struggle to keep teams off the glass because they want to get out and run, so offensive rebounds are there for the taking (Arkansas is 295th nationally in defensive rebounding percentage). They also foul a lot, 27th nationally, which means Tennessee needs to shoot better than the 69.2% they put up from the line in Fayetteville.

Tennessee’s objective is to stay physical in attacking the Arkansas defense, but do so at the pace they set instead of allowing Arkansas’ guards to turn this into a shootout. It worked really well until Grant Williams got his fourth foul last time. That first meeting also included 11 minutes from John Fulkerson and nine from Chris Darrington; if Rick Barnes sticks with the lineups he’s been using, it’ll be more Yves Pons and Derrick Walker today.

After a surprise run to the finals led by Allan Houston in 1991, Tennessee didn’t play on Saturday in the SEC Tournament from 1992-2007. Since then the Vols have seen Saturday in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2014. But they’ve only seen Sunday once since 1991, in 2009. And the Vols still haven’t won this thing since 1979.

A lot of history, a potential three-game sweep of Kentucky, and the continued pursuit of Nashville is on the line today against Arkansas. This game should be much more fun to watch. Let’s hope the outcome is the same.

Alabama and Kentucky go at 1:00 PM ET, then the Vols and Razorbacks will follow. This is only the fourth time the Vols have been on ESPN this year. Have you heard we were picked 13th in the league?

Go Vols.

 

When last we met…was 11 days ago. Tennessee played its best game of the year in Starkville, turning a 25-17 deficit into a 76-54 victory. The talking points from that win:

• Mississippi State put 6’10” Aric Holdman and 6’11” Abdul Ado on the floor at the same time, and made it their business to deny Grant Williams. It worked on Williams, who had just three shots and eight points. But it left no answer for Admiral Schofield, who scored 24 points.
• Tennessee went to Schofield and didn’t just settle for threes when Williams wasn’t a good option. The Vols were just 4-of-11 from the arc, but at one point made 11 consecutive field goals in the second half. The Bulldogs are a good defensive team – 42nd in efficiency – but had no answer for Tennessee.
• Quinndary Weatherspoon had 17 points, but the Vols took away everything else. Mississippi State made just two shots in the first eight minutes of the second half, and Tennessee’s defense encouraged them to take threes. MSU went 4-of-20 in that game, and is 342nd nationally from the arc on the year at 30.1%.

In the last three games, Tennessee’s defense has been selling out to run shooters off the three-point line (Florida), or encouraging the opponent to fire away (Mississippi State, Georgia). The former leaves the Vols vulnerable to offensive rebounds. But the latter can negate an advantage big teams like the Bulldogs often enjoy. Mississippi State is 79th nationally in offensive rebounding percentage, but grabbed only five against Tennessee. I don’t know if we can bank on MSU shooting 20% from the arc again, but I’d imagine the Vols will once again take their chances.

The Bulldogs rise to 67 in RPI, and have to know what a win over Tennessee would do for their NCAA Tournament resume. The same was true 11 days ago, but it’s especially do-or-die now.

Meanwhile Tennessee continues to play for upward mobility in the bracket, and a trip to Nashville in the first and second rounds. We put this in the comments from Wednesday’s look at championship week, but here again is the easiest way to understand what the Vols need to get to Nashville, using projected seeding from the Bracket Matrix. Each of the eight first and second round sites can host two top-four seeds. The committee will start with the number one overall seed and place teams in the closest geographical opening. So if the matrix is a good guide, the field would look like this right now:

• 1A Virginia (Charlotte)
• 1B Villanova (Pittsburgh)
• 1C Xavier (Detroit)
• 1D Kansas (Wichita)
• 2A Duke (Charlotte)
• 2B North Carolina (Nashville)
• 2C Purdue (Detroit)
• 2D Cincinnati (Pittsburgh)
• 3A Auburn (Nashville)
• 3B Michigan State (Wichita)
• 3C Tennessee (Dallas)
• 3D Michigan (Dallas)

If the committee agrees with the matrix and the Vols are the third No. 3 seed, they need to move past two teams to find their way to Music City next weekend. The Big Ten held their tournament last weekend, so there is no additional opportunity for Purdue, Michigan State, or Michigan to impress the committee. But Michigan or Michigan State would still go to Nashville over Tennessee because it’s far closer to the Spartans and Wolverines than Wichita or Dallas (or Boise and San Diego, where every four seed will land).

Meanwhile Auburn faces Alabama in the SEC Tournament’s first quarterfinal game today at 1:00 PM ET. The Vols need to win, but could use some help from an Auburn (or even Cincinnati) loss. The Vols can still get to Nashville even if they’re a No. 3 seed, it just looks like they’ll need to be the first No. 3 seed.

Man, this math is a lot more fun than calculating the bubble.

The journey continues at 7:00 PM ET tonight. Go Vols.

The Vols are off until Friday night, plenty of time to celebrate an SEC Championship and an impressive slate of awards:

⭐️ #SECMBB POSTSEASON HONORS ⭐️

+ COY : Rick Barnes
+ POY : Grant Williams
+ All-SEC : Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield
+ 6th Man : Lamonté Turner pic.twitter.com/NX4d0mFziJ

— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) March 6, 2018

Rick Barnes is the first Vol to earn SEC Coach of the Year since Bruce Pearl in 2008. Ron Widby, Mike Edwards, Bernard King, Ernie Grunfeld, Dale Ellis, and Tony White combined to win eight SEC Player of the Year awards from 1967-87. But since then, only Ron Slay (2003) and Chris Lofton (2007) have captured the league’s biggest individual prize, which now belongs to Grant Williams.

It’s a great week. How might it get even greater for Tennessee?

In Tuesday’s Bracket Matrix (featuring 130 entries!) the Vols are the third No. 3 seed, with an average seeding of exactly 3; five entries have the Vols at No. 2, five at No. 4, and 120 at No. 3. That’s a pretty solid consensus. Is there any room for Tennessee to move up (or down)?

Here are what I believe to be fairly safe assumptions:

• Virginia and Villanova are No. 1 seeds no matter what they do in their conference tournaments.
• Xavier, Kansas, and Duke are fighting it out for the other two No. 1 seeds, but none of these teams are falling below the Vols.
• The No. 4 seeds in the Bracket Matrix – Texas Tech, Wichita State, West Virginia, and Clemson – aren’t passing Tennessee without winning their conference tournaments.

The Vols can obviously help their own cause by winning their conference tournament; we’ll get to that later this week. But between now and then, a few targets above Tennessee in the matrix are in action in their respective tournaments. What losses would be meaningful to Tennessee’s chances?

Also on the table: trips to Nashville in weekend one and, potentially, Atlanta in weekend two. On this front, Tennessee’s neighbors on the three line are the biggest teams to watch. If seeded higher than Tennessee overall, Auburn and/or Cincinnati could secure an opening weekend in Nashville. This is why you’re seeing the Vols in Dallas in a lot of brackets today. The working assumption is Virginia and Duke will go to Charlotte, leaving North Carolina and a player to be named later in Nashville. Michigan or Michigan State (remember, the Big Ten is already done) could also slide in there depending on how things shake out. The Vols will need a good showing and some help to stay in-state.

What would that help look like? Here are games relevant to Tennessee’s chances to go to Nashville and move up the bracket this week:

WEDNESDAY

• ACC Quarterfinals: North Carolina vs Syracuse – 9:00 PM – ESPN2

The Tar Heels did beat Tennessee and are currently a No. 2 in the matrix. But UNC also has nine losses, and will have 10 unless they win the ACC Tournament. No team has earned a No. 2 seed with 10 losses in the expansion era; Wikipedia’s detailed records go back to 1995, and I couldn’t find any there either. Carolina’s name brand will certainly count for something, but will the committee put them on the two line and/or ahead of the Vols if they make an early exit in Brooklyn? If the Tar Heels win here, they’ll face Miami at 9:00 PM on Thursday.

FRIDAY

• American Quarterfinals: Cincinnati vs UConn/SMU – 12:00 PM – ESPN2
• SEC Quarterfinals: Auburn vs Texas A&M/Alabama – 1:00 PM – ESPN

Chances aren’t great for Cincinnati getting upset: SMU is 87th in KenPom, UConn a lowly 174th. The Bearcats beat both of them by 25 the last time they saw them. But Auburn? Two of the five teams to beat the Tigers this year are Alabama and Texas A&M. If Auburn is bounced early and the Vols go deep into the weekend, Tennessee should at least move up the ladder for Nashville.

 

 

I was 16 rows back in the upper deck yesterday. It’s the farthest from the action I’ve ever been for anything at Thompson-Boling, which was packed seat for seat in all directions for several rows beyond that. The arena’s capacity is sometimes thought of as a weakness. But when it actually meets capacity, especially without any Kentucky fans, it can rock and sway in a manner that lives up to the blood it shares with Neyland.

For a long time yesterday, the arena was just angry. The officiating wasn’t kind, and neither were we. And neither was Georgia: for a team ranking 324th in three-point shooting, they certainly love playing Tennessee. The Dawgs went 6-of-14 from the arc in Athens, bolstering them to an 11-point win. In our game preview I said I’d like to see them do that again. No problem: Georgia hit seven of their first eleven threes in Knoxville.

The officiating and the hot shooting screamed, “This just isn’t our day.” And hey, sometimes in basketball it’s not. Many of Georgia’s first half buckets were well defended and/or shots we wanted them to take. Credit the Dawgs for knocking them down.

When Tennessee got it going, they did so with a lot of the same stuff that’s brought them this far. The Vols stayed committed on the defensive end, and Georgia’s 42 first half points turned into just 19 in the second. The Dawgs didn’t score in the last three minutes, turning it over three times in that span. Meanwhile Tennessee continued to play with purpose on offense. Grant Williams had 22 points in 27 minutes, and Admiral Schofield had 23.

PB&J had 15 of Tennessee’s 21 made shots. Five of the other six were threes from Jordan Bone and Lamonte Turner. And the Vols had 15 assists (a 71.4% assist percentage) and four turnovers. That’s Tennessee’s best basketball: create opportunities for Williams and Schofield, knock down enough threes to keep them honest, and defend your butt off.

And then, when Grant Williams fouled out on one of the most ridiculous calls I’ve ever seen with the Vols down one, Rick Barnes stepped to the microphone. He was addressing whoever threw something onto the floor, but he led with something for everyone: “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Plenty of time without Grant Williams? Plenty of time when Yante Maten followed up with a three?

Yep.

Even with their best player on the bench, Tennessee’s defense still shined. And it turns out you’re still pretty good when Admiral Schofield is your best player on the floor.

In the end, Tennessee got the rings, the banner, and the scissors. Your season ends quickly in college basketball. 67 teams will make the NCAA Tournament only to lose there. You celebrate making the Sweet 16, but as we found out in 2010, you can ride plenty of emotions there too. One of Tennessee’s greatest wins and most heartbreaking losses came 48 hours apart those eight years ago. It’s the nature of the beast in postseason play.

And so, unless you’re a fan of one of seven or eight schools that regularly go to the Final Four, you cling to and celebrate the tangible things in college basketball when you get them. And while it would be great for the Vols to win their first SEC Tournament since 1979, the regular season title – earned over two grueling months instead of one quick weekend – is by far the greater accomplishment.

We may run into a game early in St. Louis and/or the NCAA Tournament where it once again just isn’t our night. It happens, and if it happens to us it’ll be disappointing. But this team now has something that can’t be swept away in such a loss. This program has secured the lasting memory that’s escaped football and men’s and women’s basketball for 8-10 years. They did it from 13th in the media poll, and they finished it with the toughness we’ve come to expect.

And they did it at home, in a game with clearer stakes and higher drama than most I’ve seen in that building. The Vols simply don’t have an opportunity to win a league with Kentucky and, recently, Florida very often, and especially not at home on the last day of the regular season. But this time they did, and despite Georgia’s best efforts, they made a memory.

On that note:

My favorite games at Thompson-Boling:

1. 2006: Tennessee 80 #2 Florida 76 – In Pearl’s first year, the win at Texas got everyone talking, and got them to show up for this game in early January. You ever think something is probably too good to be true but show up anyway just in case? That was this game. The late save by Dane Bradshaw announced Tennessee’s arrival on the national stage, and they wouldn’t leave it for the next six years.
2. 2010: #16 Tennessee 76 #1 Kansas 68 – I feel like enough time has passed here that we have to remind everyone that this was the suspended version of the Elite Eight Vols, playing their second game without four players. Chism, Maze, Prince, and Hopson beat Kansas, but not without Woolridge, Kenny Hall, and McB43.
3. 1999: Tennessee 68 #13 Kentucky 61 – The closest comparison to yesterday, the Vols hosted UK on the last day of the regular season and beat them at TBA for the first time in six years, clinching the SEC East. The first time I saw us beat Kentucky.
4. 2010: #19 Tennessee 74 #2 Kentucky 65 – The Wall/Cousins Kentucky squad had lost only once when they came into Knoxville, the first visit from Calipari as the coach in Lexington. This too is about degree of difficulty; same with the 06-07 Gators, I remember watching these guys in warmups and thinking about how perfectly we’d have to play to win. And we did.
5. 2007: Tennessee 86 #5 Florida 76 – The Pat Summitt cheerleader game, featuring one of the best teams the Vols have ever played against…and the Vols led by as many as 27 points. This just felt like everything Tennessee was supposed to be with Fulmer, Summitt, and Peyton Manning in attendance just weeks after his first Super Bowl. It’s a moment frozen in time for the athletic department a decade later.
6. 2018: #16 Tennessee 66 Georgia 61 – This is where I’d put yesterday, though I’d agree with the notion that the Schofield dunk was one of the loudest moments in TBA history. I think the 2006 Florida game was slightly louder (and had a few thousand more voices in attendance), but not by much.
7. 2000: #11 Tennessee 105 #7 Auburn 76 – The Tigers were on the preseason cover of Sports Illustrated, but got obliterated in Knoxville in Ron Slay’s freshman coming out party. My freshman year at UT.
8. 2013: Tennessee 88 #25 Kentucky 58 – A 30-point beat down of Kentucky is still the most surreal game on this list.
9. 2000: #8 Tennessee 76 #12 Florida 73 (OT) – A student section favorite, the Vols beat Florida in double overtime in Gainesville, then won in overtime in Knoxville with Tony Harris injured (but healthy enough to come off the bench in a fight). These Vols would earn a share of the SEC title; these Gators would make the Final Four. I don’t think I loved to hate any team more than the Dupay-Bonner-Haslem-Miller Gators during my time at UT.
10. 2016: Tennessee 84 #20 Kentucky 77 – Down 21 in the first half, Barnes’ first team rallied for a signature win over the Wildcats.

December home games aren’t kind for clergy, so I wasn’t there for Lofton-over-Durant or his takedown of Memphis the week before, as well as some near misses like the UNC game this year. This is just my list. What’s yours, and where did yesterday rank if you were there?

The Vols play for an SEC Championship at 6:00 PM ET tonight, but a handful of other games could impact Tennessee’s fate in the bracket. We’ll all be watching Auburn host South Carolina (3:30 PM, SEC Network), which will in part determine whether the Vols are the one or the two seed in the SEC Tournament. But in the big picture, Tennessee is currently a three seed in the Bracket Matrix, and the same clear lines from Friday are still in place:

• Virginia and Villanova are unanimous one seeds in the matrix, with Kansas and Xavier a one seed in 95% of entries. Even if the Vols win today and win the SEC Tournament, I don’t think we’re climbing this high.
• Duke, North Carolina, Purdue, and Michigan State are the two seeds in the matrix, all with an average seeding between 2.00-2.22. Duke and UNC play tonight, Purdue and Michigan State could play tomorrow in the Big Ten Tournament finals. Could those losses and a strong Tennessee finish get the Vols on this line?
• Auburn, Cincinnati, and Tennessee are the first three #3 seeds in the matrix, all with an average seeding between 2.76-2.97. The Vols are a two seed in 10 of 93 entries in the matrix this morning.
• Then there’s a break. Wichita State is currently the last three seed, but their average seeding is 3.66. West Virginia, Clemson, and Texas Tech are the first four #4 seeds, all with an average between 3.86-3.99, with another break after that for Ohio State (who lost yesterday).

My assumption is the one seeds can’t be caught, and I don’t know if any of the twos will be either. But if you’re looking for something to watch with interest, losses for those just ahead of and behind the Vols in the matrix is a good place to start. Most of those teams are in action today, plus a crucial Cincinnati/Wichita State match-up tomorrow.

#20 West Virginia at Texas – 12:00 PM – ESPN

Rick Barnes’ past is the last team in the matrix field, but could help themselves and the Vols today.

#23 Kentucky at Florida – 12:00 PM – CBS

The winner here is guaranteed a double-bye in the SEC Tournament, and could be Tennessee’s Saturday opponent in the SEC Tournament.

#2 Michigan State vs #15 Michigan – 2:00 PM – CBS (Big Ten Tournament Semifinals)

The strength of the Big Ten hurts Michigan State, but they are 29-3 and carry plenty of name recognition, so I’m not sure they’ll be caught on the two line.

TCU at #12 Texas Tech – 4:00 PM – ESPN2

The opposite is true for Texas Tech, playing for a second place finish in the nation’s best conference.

#8 Purdue vs Penn State – 4:30 PM – CBS (Big Ten Tournament Semifinals)

Purdue is still Tennessee’s best win of the season, so I don’t know if them losing here really helps or hurts the Vols.

#9 North Carolina at #5 Duke – 8:15 PM – ESPN

Carolina helps our strength of schedule, so an easy call here.

It’s a dangerous thing to allow yourself a moment before the moment. Let’s take the risk.

Postseason play of any kind would’ve been progress for Tennessee this year; perhaps flirting with the bubble last season made the big dance the only definition of success. When Tennessee beat Purdue and followed up by not losing any games it shouldn’t have lost, making the bracket became a reasonable expectation. Then it was a favorable seed in the first round. Then it was maybe a four or five.

Tennessee just kept winning. They keep winning. We’ve been using stats like, “The Vols have won 13 of their last 16,” which is amazing. But we’ve also reached the point when the whole body of work is amazing, no matter what happens from here.

In fact, Tennessee has won so much, that sentence probably isn’t true. Because now the Vols are in line to be a two or three seed, the sort of number that carries the expectation of the tournament’s second weekend. Tennessee is 22-7 (12-5), numbers we haven’t seen in eight years.

We haven’t seen anything that lasts in these eight years. Not in football, where a few weeks of joy in 2016 were swept away by the second half of the season. Not in basketball, where Bruce Pearl was out the door a year after making the Elite Eight those eight years ago, and Cuonzo Martin was already on the way out the door when we came close to doing it again in 2014.

Football’s most recent, meaningful, lasting memory is a blocked field goal in overtime at Kentucky in 2007, basketball’s a blocked shot against Ohio State in 2010. Those are the highlights for Tennessee’s athletic department. And now, after the most tumultuous football season in the history of the department, basketball has done far more than right the ship. Basketball is making new memories, built to last. Basketball is getting ready to sell DVDs, or whatever they put season highlight films on these days.

And basketball can cut down the nets at Thompson-Boling tomorrow night.

What else is left to play for:

Lines are getting clear in the Bracket Matrix. In Thursday afternoon’s update, Virginia and Villanova were one seeds in all 70 entries, Kansas in 65, Xavier in 63. Duke, Purdue, Michigan State, and North Carolina are the two seeds, each with an average seeding in the matrix between 2.00-2.16. Then Auburn, Cincinnati, and Tennessee lead off the three line with an average seeding of 2.76-2.97. West Virginia is currently just ahead of Wichita State for the last three seed, but the Mountaineers are at 3.81.

So the consensus is these are the four one seeds, those are the four two seeds, and the Vols, Auburn, and Cincinnati are definitely next. Can anything change between now and Selection Sunday? If nothing else, Tennessee and Auburn might be competing for both the SEC title and a spot in the Atlanta region, almost certainly with Virginia (and thus not with Duke or North Carolina as the two seed in their bracket). Or maybe the committee has something else in mind. But if the matrix is a good guide, Tennessee is fairly stable on the three line.

But an SEC Championship wouldn’t hurt.

To beat Georgia:

If Tennessee’s best game was last time out at Mississippi State, its worst came in Athens two weeks ago. Grant Williams went 1-for-8 and had just five points, the Vols couldn’t make up the difference from the arc, and Derek Ogbeide was the hero off the Georgia bench with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Tennessee missed a chance to take the lead with six minutes to play and never got another one, ultimately falling by 11.

Georgia’s NCAA Tournament chances were still alive after that win, but two losses in the last three have done them in. It may have also done Mark Fox in. Both teams will be in unique emotional states tomorrow.

In the “I’d like to see them do that twice” department, Georgia shot 6-of-14 from the arc in the first meeting but is 324th nationally in three-point shooting on the year. The Vols had tremendous success encouraging Mississippi State to shoot threes; Georgia would rather go through Yante Maten as opposed to MSU’s guards, but the goal for Tennessee’s defense should be the same: take your chances with their outside shooting. Doing so should also help keep the Dawgs off the offensive glass this time.

Georgia is 29th in defensive efficiency; this is still an NIT-bound, capable basketball team. I doubt anything will come easily for the Vols in this game. But in front of a sold-out crowd with the title on the line, I doubt anything will come easily for Georgia either.

It’s been an incredible season, and its most meaningful moments are yet to come. This team is allowed to dream big. You get four chances to cut down nets: one for the conference title, one for the conference tournament, one for the Final Four, and one for the national championship. The Vols have never climbed those last two ladders, haven’t won the SEC Tournament since 1979, and haven’t cut down any nets since winning the conference title in 2008.

So much has changed in a short time under Rick Barnes. Tomorrow we can get something tangible to show for it.

6:00 PM, SEC Network. Let’s keep making memories.

Go Vols.

We’ve been Mississippi State.

For all three of Cuonzo Martin’s years and the final season under Bruce Pearl, the Vols came to the last week of the regular season on the bubble. There were some games like this one, when a tournament-bound team came into Knoxville, one last opportunity for the home team. Sometimes we won. Sometimes we lost.

It’s been a long time – eight years – since the Vols were the alpha in this scenario. We’ve been more accustomed to the hunger and desperation of the team in pursuit. All that makes it a tough ask for the alpha, on the road on a night like tonight. And the Bulldogs looked the part early, leading 25-17 in the first half.

For all of those reasons, this might have been Tennessee’s best win of the season. And there is no better time than the soon-to-be-March present for that.

Mississippi State was 27th in KenPom’s defensive efficiency ratings coming into this game. Tennessee carved them up for 56.3% from the floor.

The Bulldogs put two 6’10″+ guys on the floor and made it difficult for Tennessee to play through Grant Williams from the opening tip. No problem: for the second game in a row, Admiral Schofield took over. After a career-high 25 at Ole Miss on Saturday, Schofield added 24 tonight on 9-of-18 from the floor. And Tennessee was intentional: no other player took more than eight shots, Grant Williams had only three shots, and the Vols didn’t settle for threes, finishing just 4-of-11 from the arc.

And they torched the Bulldogs, at one point making 11 consecutive field goals in the second half. That’s hard to do in warm-ups.

Meanwhile Tennessee’s defense helped break open a six-point halftime lead by holding the Bulldogs to just two field goals in the first eight minutes of the second half. Quinndary Weatherspoon had 17 points, but got no consistent help. The Bulldogs went 4-of-20 from the arc, missed six free throws, and finished at just 39.2% from the field. A team with only one home loss on the year was dismantled on its own floor in the second half.

And look, I think Mississippi State is good. I just don’t think they’ve played a team like Tennessee in Starkville.

Tennessee’s best result is still their victory over Purdue. Sweeping Kentucky is historic, and the win at Rupp three weeks ago will be remembered for a long time. But there was a quiet fear in its aftermath, quickly replacing whispers of a one seed: had the Vols peaked?

Tennessee left Lexington and lost in Tuscaloosa by 28, narrowly escaped South Carolina, then lost at Georgia. They gutted out a win against Florida, then went from up 20 to up four to up 21 to winning by eight at Ole Miss. There were some nice moments in there, but nothing that made you feel as confident as we did walking out of Rupp.

Tonight, on the road with everything on the line for Mississippi State, I think the Vols played their best game of the year. They won by 22, locked up at least the two seed in the SEC and stayed alive to win the league. They kept themselves in the conversation for a two or three seed in the NCAA Tournament. And, most importantly in the last week of the regular season, they proved their best basketball is on the floor right now and not behind them. This is a very, very, very good sign.

Go Vols.

Five of Tennessee’s first six conference games were against what should be NCAA Tournament teams. We thought there would be only two others after that, three if Alabama got its act together. But here, in the final week of the regular season, the league has one more surprise in store.

Mississippi State played a bunch of nobodies in an 8-0 start, then went to Cincinnati and lost by 15. A 2-5 start in league play made them an afterthought; they could still aspire to the program’s first NIT appearance since 2012.

But then came four wins in a row, including home victories over Missouri and Alabama. They lost the return trip to CoMo in overtime, then lost by one at Vanderbilt. But they’ve since won three straight, including a huge 12-point win at Texas A&M and an overtime victory against South Carolina. Now the Bulldogs are 21-8 (9-7), 50th in KenPom and 62nd in RPI. This is very much a bubble team, which means this is very much a game the Bulldogs need.

What Mississippi State does well:

• Defensive Efficiency: MSU is 28th in KenPom’s defensive ratings, 35th in effective field goal percentage allowed. They’ve been good at this all year.
• Getting hot at the right time: Five of MSU’s six highest-scoring games in league play have been in February. They actually lost scoring 80+ against Missouri (in overtime) and Vanderbilt, then put 79 on Ole Miss and 93 on Texas A&M on the road. They’re balanced at their best: Quinndary Weatherspoon scores 14.7 per game and brother Nick adds 11.1, but increased production from Tyson Carter and Abdul Ado has fueled their most recent run.
• Shot blocking: Ado is 6’11” and 55th nationally in block percentage, and 6’10” Aric Holman is 73rd in the same stat. MSU sometimes puts both on the floor at the same time, which could create difficult match-ups and opportunities for Tennessee on the block.

What Tennessee can do to win:

• Encourage MSU to shoot threes: The Bulldogs have hit better than 40% from the arc just five times this year. Mississippi State shoots 31.2% from the arc on the year (333rd of 351 nationally) and 30.8% in conference play (13th).
• Don’t be afraid to defend aggressively: The Bulldogs also suffer at the charity stripe, 68.6% on the year (277th) and 69.9% in conference play (10th). They’re not particularly good at getting to the line either. I don’t think it’s in Tennessee’s best interests to do anything to encourage Grant Williams to foul more often, but the rest of the lineup? Might be a good night to get up in their face.
• Take especially good care of the basketball: The Bulldogs force a steal on 9.8% of opponent possessions, 84th nationally. And they’re just as good at not turning it over themselves, which means possessions will be especially valuable. Mississippi State is 14-2 when forcing 13+ turnovers, but just 7-6 when forcing 12 or less.

The Bulldogs have lost just once at home this season, to Auburn on January 13. South Carolina just took them to overtime and Alabama lost by just four earlier this month. They also have not faced Kentucky, Florida, or Texas A&M in Starkville. Will the Bulldogs play their way onto the right side of the bubble? Or will Tennessee stay in the race for the SEC title and firm up its chances for a two or three seed?

Early game woo! 7:00 PM ET, SEC Network.