Gameday on Rocky Top

Ken Pomeroy’s data goes back to 2002; it’s a clean starting line for Tennessee basketball, as that was Buzz Peterson’s first year. We love history around here, and it’s fun to use the KenPom data to compare what the Vols have done over these last 18 seasons.

Among Tennessee teams, the 2019 Vols rate highest in that metric, finishing the season at +26.24. We’ve known that would be the case for a while. But I thought it would be fun to go back and find Tennessee’s best wins in KenPom – the best teams the Vols beat – in these last 18 years.

A great example of both KenPom’s strength and the unpredictable nature of the NCAA Tournament: Virginia was the best team in KenPom almost the entire season, and finished at +34.22. That’s the third-highest rating of the entire 18-year KenPom era, behind only the 38-1 2015 Kentucky team and 2008 Kansas. And yet Virginia needed multiple miracles to win the big prize. Even one of the highest-rated teams of the century needed to be both lucky and good after the tournament’s first weekend.

This list isn’t Tennessee’s most memorable wins, which factor in rivalries and what was on the line. These are simply the best teams the Vols beat using one of the best available metrics. We did this exercise with S&P+ and football at Rocky Top Talk three years ago; the 1999 win over Alabama probably isn’t in your top five, but in S&P+ it’s Tennessee’s fifth-best win since 1980.

We’re doing the Top 10, but the first honorable mention at 11th: the John Wall/DeMarcus Cousins 2010 Kentucky team. I often think of that group as one of the very best teams the Vols ever beat because of the two NBA All-Stars in the starting lineup. But in KenPom, these ten teams were even better:

10. 2018 Purdue +26.67 – Part one of what could be a three-act play, if the Vols and Boilermakers meet again in Destin at Thanksgiving. Tennessee’s win in the Bahamas in November 2017 was the starting point for all the success we’ve enjoyed in the last two seasons; in KenPom that game also rates as Tennessee’s most exciting win of the decade, beating out this year’s win over Vanderbilt, the 2013 four overtime affair at Texas A&M, and another honorable mention that ranks much higher in our hearts: the 2010 Sweet 16 win over Ohio State.

9. 2011 Pittsburgh +27.08 – The last elite win of the Bruce Pearl era, the Vols went to Pittsburgh on December 11, 2010 to face the undefeated #3 Panthers, who had beaten Rick Barnes and Texas earlier that year. Behind 27 points from Scotty Hopson on 10-of-13 shooting, the Vols led by as many as 20 points before winning 83-76. The Vols were 7-0 and thinking Final Four, then lost their next three games to Oakland, Charlotte, and USC, the start of a 12-15 finish to the season as rumors about Pearl’s future swirled. That Pitt team with Brad Wanamaker and Ashton Gibbs was a No. 1 seed, but lost to Butler in the second round.

8. 2019 Kentucky (twice) +27.57 – When Rick Barnes said that SEC Tournament semifinal game felt like a Final Four game, KenPom backed it up. This wasn’t the best Kentucky team of the century (2015), or the best one Tennessee beat (see the next entry). But these three games had more on the line than any UT/UK match-up this century. And the SEC Tournament showdown will go down as one of the biggest wins in that kind of situation the Vols have ever enjoyed.

7. 2017 Kentucky +27.72 – Just edging out this year’s Wildcats is the 2017 version with Malik Monk, De’Aaron Fox, and Bam Adebayo. Robert Hubbs gave Tennessee 25 points, but freshman Grant Williams stepped up with 13 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 blocks, and 3 steals. He hit the game-decider at the end of the shot clock, putting Tennessee up five with 17 seconds to go, all of this while battling leg cramps. Tennessee won 82-80 and put itself on the bubble. Kentucky went to the Elite Eight and lost to North Carolina by two.

6. 2006 Florida (twice) +28.28

5. 2007 Florida +30.81

These days Al Horford is the veteran “he’s more important than his stat line” guy on my favorite NBA team, and Joakim Noah is coming off the bench for the Memphis Grizzlies. It’s so strange to me that there are young Tennessee fans that don’t know what it was like to watch these two national champion Florida teams in warm-ups and think, “Man, we have to play perfect to beat these guys,” and then watch Tennessee do exactly that three times! And in KenPom, the Vols also beat one Gator team rated even higher:

4. 2013 Florida +31.18

The Wilbekin/Boynton/Patric Young Gators don’t have the most name recognition among Florida squads this century, but they were a force in the SEC, routinely blowing out everyone else in a down year for the league. But at the end of a six-game winning streak that could’ve/should’ve put Cuonzo Martin’s second team in the NCAA Tournament, and just three days after that four overtime game, Tennessee beat the Gators 64-58 in Knoxville behind 27 points from Jordan McRae. Florida went on to lose in the Elite Eight.

3. 2008 Memphis +31.51 – Needs no introduction, other than to say this team ultimately went farther than any on the list besides the 06/07 Gators. Fun fact: the Vols beat two eventual NBA MVPs in consecutive years, getting Kevin Durant in 2007 and Derrick Rose in 2008.

2. 2010 Kansas +31.85 – Still probably the most remarkable and unlikely Tennessee win of the decade, if not the century, in either sport. Down four players and, thanks to foul trouble, getting only 14 minutes from J.P. Prince and 19 minutes from Wayne Chism, the Vols beat #1 and undefeated Kansas. Scotty Hopson and Bobby Maze were great, but the Vols also won thanks to 14 points from Renaldo Woolridge and a clutch bomb from Skylar McBee. This Kansas team had the Morris twins, Cole Aldrich, and Sherron Collins. They would finish the regular season 32-2 before losing a stunner to Northern Iowa in the second round of the tournament.

1. 2019 Gonzaga +32.85 – No Killian Tillie, but he only played 15 games the entire year, meaning Gonzaga earned much of this rating without him. At +32.85, this is the 10th highest-rated team of the entire KenPom era. And it’s one more feather in an impressive cap of the last two years: this collection of players scored four wins against this list, five if you count 2017 Kentucky.

It’s fine by me to keep talking about basketball, even though Tuesday’s press conference raised eyebrows instead of what I’m sure was the intended alternative. Rick Barnes, perhaps honest to a fault in this case, said he’d probably be the coach at UCLA if the Bruins worked out his buyout from Tennessee.

They didn’t, and he’s still the coach at Tennessee for somewhere north of $4.5 million per year. That makes him the third-highest paid coach in college basketball at the moment. UCLA is on a short list of programs with the kind of opportunity to steal a coach from a place like Tennessee. But with the Vols paying this much money, now they’re on that list too.

With new territory comes new expectations: what kind of return should one expect on this kind of investment?

Tennessee, as you know, has never been to the Final Four and has one Elite Eight appearance. The Vols do have five Sweet 16 appearances since 2007; only a dozen programs have more in that span. But there is obviously both room for a postseason breakthrough, and the expectation that such a thing will happen.

As for the tournament itself, there are a couple of ways to look at it in Tennessee’s history:

• Since expansion to 64 in 1985: 14 appearances (40%)
• Since Jerry Green’s arrival in 1998: 13 appearances (59.1%)
• Since Bruce Pearl’s arrival in 2006: 9 appearances (64.3%)

This is who the Vols already are; since Pearl they’ve made the tournament roughly two out of three years, and the Sweet 16 one out of three.

Here is the company Tennessee has paid to join, using the top salaries from the USA Today database and each team’s track record over the last decade:

Championship Programs

Reaching beyond this last decade, Izzo won a title in 2000 and Self in 2008, giving each of these eight programs a national championship this century, all won by the current coach other than Chris Mack at Louisville. It’s not a prerequisite for a Top 10 salary: in addition to Mack, Bennett was the fourth-highest paid coach before winning his a week ago. But it’s certainly an impressive group, which includes every championship program since 2003 (Syracuse, where Jim Boeheim only makes $2.7 million) other than Florida (who lost Billy Donovan to the NBA) and UConn (who lost Jim Calhoun to retirement).

This group makes the NCAA Tournament 90% of the time. It became an every year expectation for the Vols under Bruce Pearl, and Barnes – who made the tournament 94% of the time at Texas – is recruiting well enough to build the same expectation at Tennessee.

This group makes the Sweet 16 more than half the time. The bluest of these bloods – Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, and North Carolina – have all been at least six times in the last decade. Virginia has been three times in the last six years under Tony Bennett. Villanova somehow only went twice, but cashed it all in both times.

Seven of these eight teams made the Final Four at least twice in the last decade. And the eighth is the team who just won it all.

If this feels like too big of a jump from where Tennessee is as a program right now, here are the next three highest paid coaches:

Almost There

(Not included: Utah’s Larry Krystowiak, also at $3.57 million, being paid for a bigger jump than Tennessee is looking at.)

These three programs make the tournament 73% of the time and the Sweet 16 36.7% of the time, basically what the Vols have done since Pearl. If Tennessee had a single Final Four breakthrough, its program would clearly belong in this tier already; the Vols were already paying Barnes $3.25 million, so Tennessee wasn’t far off.

This comparison suggests this is what the Vols are paying for: an expectation to be in the NCAA Tournament every year, to be in the Sweet 16 more often than not, and to break through to the Final Four. Tennessee’s recent history – both since Pearl and in the last two years under Barnes – already gave the Vols all the pieces to belong in that next tier, minus the Final Four appearance. Now the Vols have paid their way into the top tier. Barnes knows how these expectations work, having seen both sides of them at Texas. In a sense, so did Fulmer at Tennessee. And all parties involved should be excited to have them in our lives.

The last sentence of the last thing I wrote about Tennessee on Friday was, “There is as much reason to believe in Tennessee basketball right now than at any point in my lifetime.”

This was immediately tested, of course. The point of that piece on Friday was to not pretend bad things always happen to Tennessee just because good things were happening to Bruce Pearl. But we are definitely no stranger to ye olde time of testing.

On some level it felt like an accomplishment that a coach would even consider staying at Tennessee when the alternative is UCLA. Because that coach is Rick Barnes at age 64, I think most of us also believed staying at Tennessee was the better fit all along.

But as the hours stretched on – and it’s remarkable how this whole thing happened in right at 24 hours but felt like so much more – the narrative of Tennessee’s commitment to basketball moved to the forefront. I wasn’t thinking about matching UCLA dollar for dollar; those dollars still go further in Knoxville, and are now unnecessary at an impressive assortment of local restaurants. It began to feel more about what a basketball program could be worth at a football school. Especially a good basketball program at what used to be a great football school.

If Barnes simply said yes to an enormous salary a program like UCLA could offer but Tennessee could not, so be it, I told myself. But with the conversation seemingly focused on Tennessee’s overall commitment to basketball, including assistant salaries and the program’s place in the athletic department, it became a telling moment for Phillip Fulmer and the narrative of Tennessee basketball.

My teams have had a really good run over the course of my life. The Braves won the World Series when I was 14, the Vols a national championship at 17. I grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Celtics’ three titles in the 80’s, then watched them win another when I was 26. And for the most part, really until the last decade of Tennessee football, my teams were really well run and competitive on the highest levels. Only three championships, but plenty of seasons in the conversation.

Because of that, there’s a part of me that pulls for Tennessee basketball the hardest. Basketball is my favorite sport. But college basketball is also the one where my favorite team had the most room to grow, as my fandom came of age during the Wade Houston era. There were individual runs with the 2000-01 teams and Cuonzo Martin’s last season. But the long-term trust my other favorite teams earned has really only been available for Tennessee basketball twice in my 37 years. One was at the tail end of Bruce Pearl’s tenure in 2010, the post-Chris Lofton run to the Elite Eight solidifying his ability to make Tennessee, as he said then and says now about Auburn, a Top 25 program instead of a Top 25 team.

But then Pearl was gone by his own hand a year later. Anyone who’s spent any time reading me through the years knows I love Cuonzo Martin. But that hire at the time – three years at Missouri State, zero NCAA Tournament appearances – wasn’t a Top 25 program hire.

Then Rick Barnes re-established that long-term trust over the last two years. Tennessee was back in the Top 25 program conversation, with NCAA Tournament seeds built for the second weekend. McDonald’s All-Americans were signing here again. And Barnes carried none of the baggage of scandal and investigation. After a decade of instability, things suddenly seemed so safe: Fulmer in the big job, Jim Chaney running the offense, and Barnes the safest bet of all.

And then all of a sudden it seemed like he might leave, and it felt like the whole program was in jeopardy again. Because we’re not just a football school, we’re a football school where the football team is 67-70 in the last 11 years. Perhaps a football school could only be committed to basketball when football is doing well. Or even if that wasn’t the case and Barnes just took the UCLA money, would we/could we pay someone new to stay on the same level? And what names are on that list when you’re hiring a week after everyone else? The Vols benefited from excellent timing to get Rick Barnes. Before that, this program bought from the mid-major aisle, and the coaches from Buffalo, Nevada, and Wofford were already gone.

It felt like we would come only so close in basketball, but no closer. A somewhat self-imposed ceiling on basketball at a football school.

Still, it didn’t surprise me that Barnes stayed. I’ve never met the man, but Tennessee just seems like such a better fit than UCLA for him right now.

What absolutely surprises and delights me: he didn’t just stay because his assistants got raises. Jimmy Hyams reports his salary will exceed $4.5 million a year.

Tennessee paid UCLA money. In basketball.

For the moment, Tennessee has the third-highest paid coach in college basketball. That’s not a happy-to-be-here Top 25 program. That’s a real-life commitment to the championship conversation.

I know several of the guys now ranked 4-10 on that list – Tom Izzo, Roy Williams, Bill Self, Jay Wright, and now Tony Bennett – have championship resumes. I’d imagine Rick Barnes just got a couple of those dudes paid. Good for them. To me, the primary takeaway isn’t whether Barnes is worth $3.25 million or $4.5 (or $5 at UCLA). It’s the good news that Tennessee was committed enough to basketball to pay the latter.

Barnes’ return is obviously a short-term win for Tennessee. It keeps Josiah James in the fold for sure; Jordan Bone and Grant Williams are testing the NBA waters and the Vols are a No. 6 seed in ESPN’s initial 2020 Bracketology. It returns the sense of stability we lost for a very long 24 hours.

But long-term? The Vols anted up at the big table. It’s outstanding news for the program’s future whenever Barnes decides to retire (hopefully with football risen from the ashes by then to create even more revenue). Last week there was as much reason to believe in Tennessee basketball than at any point in my lifetime. This week there’s more.

Go Vols.

Starting with the regular season finale against the Vols, Auburn hit 108 threes in eight consecutive games – a ridiculous 13.5 per – including 15 against Tennessee in the SEC Tournament Championship and 17 against North Carolina in the Sweet 16. Then they beat Kentucky while hitting only 7-of-23 (30.4%) and playing without Chuma Okeke. Auburn’s path to the Final Four included no upsets in the bracket: the Tigers beat a 12, 4, 1, and 2. Now they’ll get another No. 1 from Virginia. It’s an incredible accomplishment for an incredible coach.

Maybe you’re happy for Bruce; the alternative, of course, was Kentucky in the Final Four. Maybe you would’ve preferred the Cats to win; that’s a certainly a simpler outcome from our perspective, and would’ve put a team the Vols beat twice two steps from the national title. Maybe you just didn’t care to watch then, and won’t care to watch this weekend.

Any of those options are fine. Do what you want.

Just don’t pretend bad things always happen to Tennessee just because good things are happening for Bruce Pearl.

I’d imagine there’s a small demographic that was raised to expect the worst instead of the best. You don’t have to be too young to remember 1998 or 2001, just too young to remember 2007-08: a division title in football, back-to-back national championships for the Lady Vols, and a run to #1 with an SEC title in basketball. It’s the last time the athletic department was firing on all cylinders.

And when Fulmer was out the next year and we followed it with the Kiffin/Dooley exchange, Bruce Pearl took the 2010 Vols to the program’s first Elite Eight, a point away from the Final Four. In those big three sports, it’s the athletic department’s last blip on a national championship radar.

If you’re too young for 2007-08, you might even think of that 2010 run as a symptom of Tennessee’s malaise: Elite Eight one March, had to fire the coach the next. For the next seven years, even the high points were complicated. Cuonzo Martin’s run to the Sweet 16 in 2014. Individual great wins under Butch Jones that never stood the test of time by turning into great seasons, including an especially close 2015 and an only-up-then-only-down 2016. Elite Eights for Holly Warlick in 2013, 2015, and 2016, but no Final Four breakthrough.

For certain younger fans, I’m sure it seems like bad things do always happen to Tennessee. I can understand a negative instinctual response to Pearl cutting down the nets to get to the Final Four.

But watching Pearl make the Final Four – or win it all, which he might – isn’t the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario would’ve been all of that happening if Tennessee actually did finish 13th in the SEC two years ago.

It would’ve been bad enough last season, a basement SEC finish while Pearl won the league title. And even a reasonable follow-up from 13th place this season – which almost certainly wouldn’t have included the kind of wins on the recruiting trail the Vols are currently enjoying – would’ve been no match for watching Pearl do this.

Both would’ve driven us right back to the Bring Back Bruce fantasy at record speed, or at least a lament of its loss if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that it was, in fact, fantasy. And that’s the thing about fantasy: reality is always better, because it’s, you know, real.

And here’s what’s really, actually, no-kidding happened at Tennessee the last two years:

• 57 wins, a two-year program record
• A No. 3 seed and No. 2 seed back-to-back, a two-year program record
• Four weeks at #1, a program record
• 4-2 against Kentucky
• Our first consensus first-team All-American since 1983
• 2018 SEC Championship
• 2019 Sweet 16

It’s that last point where some will complain this team should’ve gone farther. I’m still in the “give Purdue credit” camp a week later; the bigger missed opportunity still feels like Loyola-Chicago. It’s understandable when you spend most of the year believing this is the best team in school history, there’s disappointment when they go out before becoming just the second team in school history to make the Elite Eight.

We talked about the myth of linear progression last week; you want progress for sure, but it’s never exclusively linear. It felt that way for Pearl at Tennessee, but I’d imagine it did not his first two years at Auburn.

The Vols are a program with only one Elite Eight to its name. But it will always be a dangerous game to make the NCAA Tournament a pass/fail rubric for the program’s success.

Here’s a list of the most Sweet 16 appearances since 2007:

• Nine: Kansas, North Carolina
• Eight: Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State
• Seven: Wisconsin
• Six: Arizona, Florida, Gonzaga, Louisville, Syracuse, Xavier
• Five: Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon, Purdue, Tennessee, UCLA, West Virginia

When fans say, “We should make the Sweet 16 every year!”? Even the bluest of bloods miss out 30% of the time. And in these last 13 years, only six programs have made the Sweet 16 more often than not. It is, of course, not the ultimate goal for any program, and it’s not a hard-and-fast measure of success: Villanova has only four Sweet 16 appearances but two national championships since 2007. But for Tennessee, it’s still a good benchmark. And when the program is healthy – which still might be Rick Barnes’ greatest accomplishment – you build forward progress from there.

The NCAA Tournament will always be a unique, often cruel, and occasionally beautiful challenge. The entire goal of the regular season is to get your team playing its best basketball in March, and win enough games along the way to make the bracket as easy as possible. In this, Barnes has done a great job: a No. 3 seed and No. 2 seed the last two years is the best anyone from the SEC has done, besting Kentucky (No. 5 and No. 2) and Auburn (No. 4 and No. 5). And as we’ve seen, once you get there anything can happen, good or bad.

It’s understandable to have wanted more for this team. But given the history of Tennessee’s program and the last decade in this athletic department? I don’t understand treating these last two years like they were anything less than spectacular, no matter what Auburn does.

So cheer for Bruce. Or cheer against him. Or don’t watch. But acting like something bad always happens to Tennessee just because something good is happening to Pearl? Most of us are old enough to know better. And those who aren’t should be more appreciative of the last two seasons than any of us.

The last time things were this good for Tennessee basketball, Pearl was in trouble with the NCAA five months later. Maybe he will be again at Auburn, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll win it all this weekend, maybe Virginia will win by 30. But the most important truth for Tennessee has nothing to do with Pearl.

Because the most important truth is this: there is as much reason to believe in Tennessee basketball right now than at any point in my lifetime.

It’s a credit to what Rick Barnes and these players have built that, in the immediate aftermath of Purdue’s win, I could google 2020 NCAA Tournament sites with a straight face.

(The regions aren’t friendly – New York, LA, Indianapolis, and Houston – but the Final Four is in Atlanta.)

The long-term achievement of this team – the last two, really – was building the program itself. We all wanted more for Admiral Schofield and Kyle Alexander, in large part because of that very truth. But Schofield, Alexander, and the rest have given Tennessee a chance to be in the second weekend conversation going forward, and with that a chance to break new ground in the future.

One of the things that made Bruce Pearl’s run so impressive was a sense of linear progression: the stunning run to the tournament in year one, the Sweet 16 in year two, a No. 1 ranking and SEC title in year three, then the program’s first ever Elite Eight in year five. But it’s also true that his two highest-seeded teams lost, just like this one, earlier than they were bracketed to fall.

Every path through March is different. Last night’s loss feels so bad in part because of the potential this team had. But the bracket’s potential for upsets ended up being non-existent this year. The 2000 and 2018 losses were far worse in this department, because the path was so much easier on paper.

The bracket will always be unpredictable. What Tennessee has done is create an expectation that it will give itself a chance to advance.

The program still carries those memories from Pearl’s 2006-11 tenure. But we also can’t forget the danger of three coaches in three years when Barnes took over. And the present accomplishment isn’t a cycle-up year with a bunch of great players; that’s what Cuonzo’s 2014 run felt like as it was happening. It was Pearl, in the second half of his time here, who argued the Vols were a Top 25 program. It’s the same argument he’s making right now at Auburn.

Barnes has the credentials for such an idea too, past and present. If next year’s team makes the Elite Eight, there will be a sense of linear progression again. But in sports, thinking in those terms is usually more trouble than it’s worth. It won’t always be linear. But progression overall is the important part. And this Tennessee team and its players have earned that.

If Grant Williams and Jordan Bone return, the Vols will find themselves right back in the national conversation from preseason on. Those two would join Jordan Bowden and Lamonte Turner as seniors, with John Fulkerson a redshirt junior. The Vols will also get D.J. Burns as a redshirt freshman, who would’ve been the highest-rated recruit on this year’s team. And they’ll bring in Josiah James, the third-highest-rated recruit of the modern era period.

If Bone leaves early, Lamonte Turner’s importance will only increase, but they can also get some of those minutes from James in theory. Bone could end up being the better NBA prospect, but Williams would be harder to replace, and not just because he’s a two-time SEC Player of the Year. With or without him making a comeback for a chance to win it thrice and improve his draft stock, the Vols have to get more from their post players. The Vols got 12 minutes per game from Fulkerson this year, up from nine the year before, with an in-kind uptick in scoring and rebounding. But Derrick Walker’s minutes actually decreased, from 8.8 to 5.3. Without Alexander, Schofield, and potentially Williams? There’s a big void someone (or multiple someones) has to step into next season.

If both Williams and Bone depart early, next season will have a reload/retool feel that could depend a lot on how good James and Burns are right away. But just as the Vols have played themselves into the second weekend conversation, they’re recruiting at a level to continue the program’s progress. There are no certainties; the program looked ready to ascend a number of times in the last 20 years and then ran into trouble soon after. But Rick Barnes is a better fit than Jerry Green and Cuonzo Martin, and a more stable one than Bruce Pearl.

The 2019-20 Vols will continue their series with Memphis, begin home-and-homes with Wisconsin and Cincinnati, and we could get Tennessee-Purdue III (plus Florida State and VCU) in Destin for Thanksgiving. The SEC shows no signs of slowing down, as the long line of fired coaches will attest to.

But neither does Tennessee. March is cruel. But four years after what could have been a crippling situation, the Vols are building a program to survive and advance.

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 history 11 years ago. Purdue certainly qualifies as a great team.

But Tennessee’s furious rally in the final ten minutes of regulation was seconds away from paying off as both an individual memory to live forever, and an open door to the program’s second Elite Eight appearance. Instead, it goes on the difficult Sweet 16 list. Up seven with 4:30 to play in 2000. Up 20 at halftime in 2007. A generous charge call against Jarnell Stokes in 2014.

I don’t think the refs should be the first or longest memory from this loss. Lamonte Turner got Carson Edwards’ body with enough contact to make that call one I can at least comprehend. We didn’t seem to get an angle to verify the ball went off Edwards’ foot seconds earlier. The refs did botch the final 1.7 seconds, starting the clock a hair early and not giving (not expecting?) a timeout immediately when it was called for, costing the Vols a few tenths of a second. But that part just leads to a hypothetical heave.

What actually happened was some of the very best theater I’ve ever seen in a basketball game on any level. Admiral Schofield and Ryan Cline trading daggers was impossible stuff, creating the kind of game you know you’re going to remember forever and you hope you’re on the right side of its ending. The drama deserved a better ending in regulation than the one it ultimately got in overtime.

That one went like this: Kyle Alexander fouled out, and the Vols were done.

Purdue took 31 threes in regulation. They took zero in overtime: Alexander fouled out with 3:01 to go, and Grady Eifert made two free throws to put Purdue up 87-84. The next two possessions: Carson Edwards with a layup, Matt Haarms with a dunk. Tennessee almost survived Purdue shooting 54% from the floor – the best any opponent shot outside Rupp Arena – and going 15-of-31 from the arc. They could not survive an offense that requires you to defend that without Alexander left in there at the rim.

And yes, Tennessee missed 14 free throws. Purdue missed 17, so it was a wash in the end result. The Vols certainly could’ve done better there, and have all year. Early and often, it was a visual reminder that for all we’ve seen this group of players do – including the most wins in a two-year period in school history – this was still their first Sweet 16. You could tell how happy they were to get here against Iowa, and they earned every bit of it after what happened against Loyola-Chicago the year before.

As Tennessee is still looking for its second Elite Eight and first Final Four, there’s a desire for breakthrough that’s part of the Vols’ basketball DNA. And for several of these heartbreaking tournament losses – 2000 North Carolina, 2007 Ohio State, last year with Loyola – the Vols had so much coming back, you could assume natural progression. And sometimes you get it: the 2001 Vols crashed and burned, but the 2008 Vols got to number one and this team went a round deeper in March. Depending on what Grant Williams and Jordan Bone decide to do, this team can still bring back quite a bit in 2020, plus the program’s first McDonald’s All-American coming in since Tobias Harris.

But this group of players already taught us so much about what you can do with expectations by going from 13th in the SEC two Novembers ago to all of this. I loved writing about this team. They’re fun to watch, and man, they made us proud.

Purdue made their fans proud tonight. Give them credit. This might be the best Sweet 16 field we’ve ever seen, and nothing was coming easy. This is the best Tennessee team of the KenPom era (2002-present). But right now, in that metric Purdue is the best team to knock the Vols out of the tournament other than the No. 1 seed Buckeyes in 2007.

Every season tells a story. We, of course, hoped this team would tell a longer story than we’d heard before. They earned that expectation. Tonight Purdue was better over the course of 45 minutes, leaving us with an ending that will always hurt when it doesn’t involve nets and a ladder. But what a great story this Tennessee team was. And is.

Go Vols.