Category Archives: Basketball

SEC Champions: The Fate We Make

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?

All the best SEC Championship highlights, celebrations, tweets, and interviews

You can stop pinching yourself now. It really happened. The Vols won a share of the SEC regular-season championship last night by out-toughing the Georgia Bulldogs, 66-61. It was a win that welcomed back to Knoxville that old familiar championship feeling for which we’ve been pining for far too long. You know it’s true when they’re printing and selling Vols SEC Championship Tees.

Here’s a collection of all of the best post-game tweets, highlights, celebrations, and interviews, because basking in all that stuff is what you do after a championship. It’s in the manual. (Please add any we may have missed in the comments section.)

But before the post-game stuff, here’s a warm up:

The crowd-led Star Spangled Banner


Okay, so now for the somehow-even-awesomer stuff.

Highlights with homers


Highlights with SECN commentary

The view of the last few minutes from the stands

Celebrations

The immediate post-game interviews came next, but we’re going with the celebrations first:

Post-game, on-court interviews

Rick Barnes:

Admiral Schofield:

Post-game press conferences

Rick Barnes:

Admiral Schofield:

Grant Williams, Lamontre (yes, I did that on purpose) Turner, and Kyle Phillips:

Player tweets


Congratulatory tweets


And finally, what’s next:

The 2018 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament Bracket has the Vols playing on Friday, March 9 at 7:00 p.m. against the winner of LSU and Mississippi State.

And there’s this, from Ken Pomeroy:

Tennessee Vols Basketball Makes Us All Feel Like Champions

 

For the past decade-plus, I’ve worn my Power T with pride, but there have been a lot of times where I’ve looked down forlornly at it, wondering if it was my scarlet letter. Living in Alabama, it’s been a burden to carry around with me. I’ll never shun my alma mater, but there have been countless times when a scoff or a joke from a stranger lurks right around the corner.

For years, I lashed back defensively. After a while, failures in virtually every sport humbled me to the point where I’d grin and endure it, apologetically making a self-depricating quip about what it’s like to be a Vol in the midst of what has been a Volpacolypic era.

Tonight — and all throughout this basketball season — it’s been great to be a Tennessee Vol yet again.

After everything we’ve endured this season, I feel like erecting a statue of Rick Barnes somewhere on campus. Heck, let’s at least name a crosswalk after him or something. What we’ve seen from him as a coach and this team as a whole has been nothing short of remarkable. It’s also been everything we needed.

We’ve stood on our own social media or Internet platforms for years, defending football coaches who wind up stabbing us in the backs or reddening us in the face. All of that culminated this past year with what seemed like a surreal football season where Butch Jones’ tenure as head coach spiraled out of control with the worst season in school history. A year after back-to-back 9-4 seasons, UT’s football team laid a 4-8 egg and went an unheard-of 0-8 in the SEC. We were embarrassed, frustrated, ridiculed, and we deserved it.

Following that horrific, forgettable season, our absolute joke of an athletic department led by incompetent power-booster Jim Haslam and his puppet — former athletic director John Currie — tried to force Greg Schiano down our throats after finally, mercifully giving in and firing Butch. It incited a revolt, a mini-riot and a national firestorm where the media played the part of the trailer park frenzy.

Currie was fired. Legendary football coach Phillip Fulmer was hired as athletic director. Jeremy Pruitt was hired as the new head coach after about 736 coaches turned down the Vols, and life returned to normal. But, then, after a successful early signing period, Tennessee’s new football staff largely struck out on national signing day, failing to sign any marquee prospects they were in on down the stretch.

Happiness, seemingly, decided to throw all the orange out of its closest years ago.

All the while, though, Tennessee’s basketball team lurked back in the shadows, winning games. Amid the darkest final days of the football season, UT’s hoops began with dominant defensive showings in wins over Presbyterian and High Point. Then, the Vols went to the Bahamas and beat Purdue and North Carolina State, along with playing Villanova to the brink in a close loss.

A team that was picked 13th out of 14 teams in the SEC believed all along it wasn’t going to be that kind of team. Most importantly, it began to show us. The months wore on, the football drama unfolded, and — even while we fretted and stewed and watched our frustrations unfold with our once-proud football program — we tuned in every Wednesday and Saturday to watch our hoops team.

What started as a nice little diversion grew into something more. This was for real, and we began to believe what the Vols believed: That they were potentially in store for big things.

A hiccup came around the New Year, when UT lost consecutive tough games to open the SEC slate on the road against Arkansas and at home against Auburn in a game that seemed like an awful loss at the time but would age well. When we feared they’d slip back to reality, they whipped Kentucky by 11 at Thompson-Boling Arena on their way to winning nine out of 10, a streak that ended with another hard-fought victory in Rupp Arena.

Yes, that’s right: the Vols swept Kentucky. They also swept Vanderbilt and beat Florida. The only real hiccup of the rest of the season came on the road at Tuscaloosa on Feb. 10 when a mediocre Alabama team demoralized the Vols. But it’s basketball; those things happen. Still, in the scope of things, there were no “bad” losses.

Saturday night, Coach Barnes’ team overcame a torrid shooting start by Georgia with some clutch play from Admiral Schofield and Lamonte Turner (as well as a massive defensive play by Kyle Alexander) down the stretch to even the score with the Bulldogs after losing to them on the road a couple weeks ago. The victory gave Tennessee a share of the SEC regular-season title with an Auburn team that is now depleted by injuries heading into the tournament. Remarkably, UT is 13-5 in the SEC and on another four-game winning streak.

There are so many heroes on this team, though. Throughout the year, nearly everybody in Barnes’ regular rotation have had spotlight moments. The Vols have shown they can get in 3-point shooting contests and offensive-shootout games and win. They’ve also shown they can grind it out and win close, rugged battles. They’ve beaten bigger teams, and they’ve beaten smaller teams. Rarely does UT’s defense take nights off. They may not be more talented than you, but they’re tougher.

As Mississippi State coach Ben Howland said after the Vols embarrassed the Bulldogs in Starkville last week, Barnes has two “bulls” in Schofield and Grant Williams who are difficult for anybody to match up with. They’ve got a cold-blooded killer in Lamonte Turner who needs to shoot more, a point guard in Jordan Bone who needs to attack more, a streaky scorer in Jordan Bowden and a former national leading scorer in James Daniel who can shoot or dish, depending on the moment.

Alexander has shown up at key times this season and is Tennessee’s truest NBA prospect, and then freshman Derrick Walker is turning into a valuable minutes-eater on the interior. Fellow freshman Yves Pons has enjoyed some nice moments, too. Every week we watch. Every week, there’s a new star.

Most importantly, they’ve made us feel good again. I love this team. You love this team. They love their coach. They love each other. They play hard. They play well. And they play for each other. Entering next week’s SEC tournament in St. Louis, the Vols will get the all-important two-night bye and play Friday night for the first time. Whether that’s a benefit for UT or not remains to be seen, but this team has rarely had outings where they’ve not been ready to play.

Barnes has put together perhaps the best coaching job of his career, and for a guy who gets ridiculed for not being able to recruit, he’s built a championship team in a year when the SEC is arguably the best conference in the nation. Without question, it’s the best the league has been top-to-bottom in a decade. Every night is a rugged showdown, and the Vols were built for this kind of play.

They’re rough. They’re gritty. And, after Saturday night’s regular season-capping victory over UGA, they’re champions.

Thank you, Coach Barnes and thank you Vols for making us all wear our Power Ts with pride again.

I said it’s great to be a Tennessee Vol!

Vols cut down the nets with a hard-fought 66-61 win over Georgia

The Tennessee Volunteers beat the Georgia Bulldogs 66-61 this evening to win a share of the 2017-18 SEC regular-season championship. While their win against Mississippi State last Tuesday may have been their most complete performance, tonight’s was probably their gutsiest and most grueling, as they had to endure a game-long battle with inconsistent foul calls, foul trouble, frustrating play stoppages, and a Georgia team that not only featured a terrible matchup for the Vols’ squad but a backcourt that was abnormally hot from the three-point line in the first half.

Almost nothing went right early on either side of the court. Georgia’s Yante Maten and Tennessee’s Grant Williams spent most of the first period trying to determine how the officials were going to call the game, and Georgia’s usually feeble perimeter attack managed to nail nearly 60% of their three-point attempts.

Meanwhile, Tennessee couldn’t hit shots, couldn’t rebound, and couldn’t get into any sort of groove whatsoever. It was like playing basketball on a beach. They went to the locker room down 42-34.

The Vols didn’t so much storm back as claw their way back in the second half. On the defensive side of the ball, they held the Bulldogs to three points in the first eight and a half minutes.

On offense, Tennessee wasn’t exactly operating at full throttle, but they were able to gradually make progress, and they narrowed the lead to a single point when the clock hit 13:44 in what will forever remain one of my favorite plays of all time:

From there, Tennessee kept things close until they were finally able to take the lead on a Lamonte Turner three-pointer with 6:23 left to play.

At that point, the Vols had gone on a 21-11 run and seemed to be threatening to really take control. But Grant Williams chose that time to go on a fouling spree, getting a cheap one at 5:17 and following it up by fouling a three-point shooter at 3:58. With no room for margin, he picked up his last foul at 3:33 when he fell underneath the basket and happened to be on the ground when a Georgia player landed on him, giving him his fifth. Because Williams was one of the primary keys to the slow-motion comeback, Tennessee appeared to be in trouble. They were down by one with three and a half to go and now missing one of their two best players.

Maten then drove the point home by hitting a three-pointer to put the Dawgs up 61-57, but Tennessee’s Turner matched that on the next possession and once again narrowed the lead to one.

And then, finally, the game was iced by Jordan Bowden, Kyle Alexander, and Admiral Schofield. Bowden got fouled and hit both of his free throws to put the Vols up 62-61 with a minute remaining, and on the next possession, Alexander stole the ball. Schofield hit a jumper, and the Vols went up by three. leaving Georgia with 10 seconds to attempt to tie the game. They missed their shot, Alexander nabbed the rebound, and Schofield sealed the deal at the free throw line. Vols win, 66-61.

Schofield and Williams led the team in points with 23 and 22, respectively, but nobody else but Turner (who had 9) even sniffed double figures. Alexander did have 9 rebounds.

This had to have been one of the toughest contests for the Vols all season long, but they held up and came out on top. That bodes well for the postseason, as this team has shown it can win whether you make them play pretty or ugly.

Tonight was about as ugly as it gets, but when the clock hit all zeroes, it was about as pretty as it gets.

Vols SEC Championship Tees

After being picked in the preseason to finish 13th out of 14 teams in the conference, the Tennessee Volunteers are the 2018 SEC Champions, and what better way to celebrate than with Vols SEC Championship tees?

Yes, Tennessee secured the regular season co-championship with a grueling 66-61 victory at home over the Georgia Bulldogs this evening, and yes, we have two regular-season championship tees to commemorate the occasion:

Order now, as we expect them to go quickly. The official tee that you saw the guys wearing on the court after the game can be backordered on a pretty quick turnaround.

Who would have thought back in November that Rick Barnes and the Tennessee Volunteers would be cutting down the nets after finishing the regular season tied with Auburn for first in the SEC? Especially when the media thought Tennessee would be one of the worst teams in the entire league and when the league turned out to be one of the best in the country? But the guys beat an excellent Purdue team in the Battle for Atlantis, gave another excellent team in Villanova all they could handle, and then simply continued to get better and better and tougher and tougher as the season progressed.

It’s a welcome breath of fresh air after an extended period of hope-deferment on Rocky Top. Think about it. Is there anything in your closet that bears both the words “Tennessee” and “championship?” It’s long past time to get those lofty words back into our closets. Football may be coming, but basketball is here. Right now. Today.

So, don’t just enjoy the fact that the 2017-18 Tennessee Volunteers basketball team is the regular season SEC co-champion.

Relish it.

And while you’re basking in the reward for hanging with a team through its ups and downs, get yourself a shirt that will remind you not only of what happened today but also of what the future may hold.

After all, you’re going to need something to wear starting next week when the real madness begins.

SEC regular season championship TV channel, tip times, and online game-watching party

As Will has already mentioned this morning, there’s a lot of really good basketball today. Most importantly to Vols fans, of course, is the two-team race between Tennessee and Auburn for the SEC regular-season championship. If both teams win or both teams lose, they are co-champs, but either team can have the banner to itself by winning with the other losing. Auburn hosts South Carolina at 3:30, and Tennessee hosts Georgia at 6:00.

Will posted the Vols game preview yesterday, and you can hear him talking about it on the radio right here:

If you’re looking for an Auburn-South Carolina preview, check out College and Magnolia for the Auburn perspective and Garnet and Black Attack for the South Carolina perspective.

This will be our game thread for both games.

Auburn-South Carolina

Tennessee-Georgia

Go Gamecocks!

Go Vols!

 

What to Watch: Saturday, March 3

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.

Tennessee vs Georgia Preview: For The Scissors

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.

Tennessee 76 Mississippi State 54 – The Right Time

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.

Tennessee Vols at Mississippi State Bulldogs: game time, TV channel, and game thread

Tennessee continues its trip through the Magnolia State this evening with a game in Starkville against Mississippi State. The Bulldogs are only 9-7 in the SEC, but are 21-8 overall and 7-2 this month and have lost only one game at home this season.

The game’s at 7:00 and will be televised on the SEC Network. Online, you can catch it at WatchESPN.

See you in the comments below.

Go Vols!