If Tennessee’s third straight 20+ point win didn’t give you the vapors, this definitely will: Surprise losses by Duke and Kansas yesterday opened up the race for the fourth No. 1 seed (with Villanova, Virginia and Purdue near-locks). Behind them, chance to earn a No. 1 seed, per BPI: Tennessee: […]

The Vols have been checking off all the signs of a great team this season: Signature wins (Purdue, Kentucky, get back to me on Texas A&M) Competitive with elite teams (Villanova, North Carolina, Auburn?) No bad losses The graduate-level version of no bad losses is, “Blow out bad teams.” Add […]

The Vols are 16-5 (6-3), tied for second in the SEC, and host Ole Miss tomorrow (6:00 PM ET, SEC Network). The Rebels are 11-11 (4-5), 76th in KenPom, and yet to win on the road this year. They are probably a little better than their record: three of their […]

And now, the turn toward home. The SEC didn’t disappoint over the weekend, taking the Big 12/SEC Challenge from the nation’s best conference with six wins. The Big 12 had 16 non-conference losses coming into the challenge before Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt got it done for the […]

Tennessee was 14-5 entering today, but got there without any start-to-finish statements against major conference foes. The Vols ran away from Wake Forest in the final eight minutes, slowly pulled away from Texas A&M, and survived a furious rally from Vanderbilt after a 20-point lead earlier this week. But there […]

Opportunity knocks for the SEC tomorrow, and particularly hard for a handful of bubble teams. The Big 12 has five teams in Ken Pomeroy’s Top 20 and three more in the Top 40. They lead the nation in conference RPI with a ridiculous .863 winning percentage (101 wins with just […]

Tennessee is capable of winning in so many different ways, it’s hard to create a formula for their success. Last year assists were the go-to stat: the only way the Vols were getting good offense was through good ball movement, and if that didn’t happen they didn’t defend well enough […]

Here’s a point we would have made if the Vols lost today:  Tennessee’s next three SEC games are at home against the only three teams in the league with an RPI of 100+ (Vanderbilt, LSU, Ole Miss). Thrown in for fun is a road trip to Ames, Iowa to face […]

The Vols dropped a tough one at Missouri, where holding the Tigers without a field goal for the last 6:47 wasn’t quite enough to overcome 24% from the arc and 62% from the free throw line. Tennessee goes to 12-5 (3-3), but a road loss to a quality team like […]

Somewhere in dreams, Bruce Pearl still wears an orange blazer and the Vols never missed an NCAA Tournament. Perhaps a little further west in dreams, Rick Barnes still wears that other shade of orange and his teams kept finding their way into the tournament’s second weekend. The nearly-impossible task put […]