Is Tennessee Basketball On Its Way Back?

What a great win for Rick Barnes and the Volunteers over Kentucky last night! Honestly, the last time there was this much fan enthusiasm about Tennessee basketball was the very second before we all found out that Bruce Pearl could throw one hell of a barbecue.

There's not been all that much fun since then. Pearl lasted one more year before he was fired, and the four years between his last season and the first one for Barnes was a quagmire, highlighted by Cuonzo “Screw this, I’m going to California so I can disappoint their fan base too!” Martin, and Donnie “Ten Year Show Cause” Tyndall, the two posers they hired to run the program. I guess there was also a Sweet Sixteen run that ended controversially, and the “cute” nickname “Donnie Knoxville” that everyone gave Tyndall when we tried to talk ourselves into him. Not great. I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I certainly won’t be bouncing my grandkids on my knee telling them about the time that Cuonzo... wore a bowtie?

Which is why the Barnes hire was so refreshing. Sure, he wasn’t my first choice, and a lot of his Texas’ teams underachieved, but at least I knew the Vols were getting a legitimate grown up that was actually capable of building a real basketball program, one that had a chance to make the NCAA tournament every year.

Of course, as there 26-28 record over the last season and a half would suggest, they aren’t that program yet. Which makes their last two home games against Kentucky even stranger. Last year, they erased a 21 point deficit and came away victorious in perhaps the most improbable victory in the history of the program; and last night, they basically led the whole game, and then closed it out by making almost all of massive plays down the stretch, despite being vastly outmatched and outgunned.

I honestly have no idea how they did it. Tennessee literally has no size; Grant Williams, who is 6’5, and Lew Evans, who is 6’7, are basically their only SEC-level “bigs” since John Fulkerson went down with injury last month. This is also the youngest Vol team I can remember, as the roster only contains two upperclassmen, seniors Robert Hubbs and Evans. There’s no juniors, and everyone else that plays major minutes is a sophomore or freshman. I think it's funny how Butch Jones loves to rail about how his Tennessee football teams were always “young” and “didn’t know how to win yet”, but he’s never come close to coaching a team as young as the one Barnes is guiding this season. And despite their youth, they’re still showing signs of life! Their nine losses this season, many of them to ranked teams, have come by an average of just 8.7 points! They’re just a few unlucky bounces away from being like 15-5 and actually having a legitimate shot at an NCAA bid.

And think about this: if you lined up every player on both teams side-by-side, and then asked two random college coaches to pick teams in a game with their life on the line, there’s no question that Kentucky would’ve had at least 5 of the first 6 players picked. I mean, this isn’t even one of the two or three most talented teams John Calipari has had since he’s been there, and they still probably have 5 NBA guys; more than likely, Tennessee doesn’t have any. And the Vols, again with size problems, literally had no answer inside for the Wildcats’ Bam Adebayo, who was plowing through everyone like he was Marshawn Lynch on HGH. I have no idea why that dude only got 8 shots. Like why not go inside to him every time? There was one play late in the second half where he put his shoulder squarely into the chest of a UT defender, knocking that guy to the floor and freeing himself up for an uncontested layup. But hey, I guess it was more important for UK’s Malik Monk to go 3-13 from three point range. Gotta show off that “shooting touch” to the pro scouts.

In other news, Hubbs was awesome (25 points on 9-14 shooting), and the Vols forced 14 turnovers and somehow only got outrebounded by 1.

Look, I’m not going overreact and suddenly expect the Vols to rip off like a ten game winning streak. This is still an extremely young, vastly undersized basketball team that’s more than likely going to finish around .500 again. This isn’t the year to judge Barnes; that’ll come next year, when the roster is more experienced and, hopefully, a little taller.

Which brings me to this point: why can’t Tennessee, with the right coach, become a perennial power that competes for national titles? That should be the goal on Rocky Top, right? If a Florida, a football school, can win back-to-back national championships, then whey can’t Tennessee win one? If Ohio State, another football school, can get to multiple Final Fours, then shouldn’t that be realistic, attainable goal in Knoxville too? If Villanova, a small, private religious school without much money, can win a national title, then again, why can’t the Vols?

Tennessee is never going to be Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, etc., but there’s no reason they couldn’t slide into that next echelon of programs, and recapture the success they had during the six years of Pearl. Remember how awesome those seasons were? The deep tournaments runs, Pearl’s ridiculous antics, all the great wins…. All of those things are replicable!

Pearl told Clay Travis a couple of years ago that he thought Tennessee was the second best basketball job in the SEC, behind Kentucky, and I tend to agree. “But Matt, how about Florida! That’s a better job right!!!??” Maybe? They certainly don’t have near the fan support, considering they couldn’t even sell out consistently during their national title seasons in ’06 and ’07, when they literally had the best team in the country. Meanwhile, Tennessee, particularly when they’re rocking and rolling, has no problem filling their massive, 20,000+ seat arena, evidenced by the fact that they have finished in the top 10 in attendance in the country eight times since 2006. The fans actually care about winning there; that’s not necessarily the case at the other SEC schools. Throw in a few in-state recruiting hot beds (like Memphis and Nashville), and past success (they made the Sweet Sixteen four times in eight years between 2007 and 2014), and you’ve got more than enough elements to build a winning, national title-contending program.

That’s the standard we should expect at Tennessee, because again, if they can do it at Florida, Villanova, or Ohio State, why can’t it happen in Knoxville?