The Volunteers have a huge chance here.
Any Tennessee-Alabama game has enough going on to be must-see television, but this one feels different. Yet another top ten SEC showdown is on deck, and this one might just end up determining a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Tennessee has never landed a No. 1 seed, despite being oh-so-close so many times under Rick Barnes. The Vols’ final shot for a massive regular season win comes on Saturday when Alabama comes to town.
The Crimson Tide, currently the projected No. 3 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, have a tough stretch ahead of them to finish the year. At Tennessee, vs. Florida and at Auburn round out their regular season. That’s not even mentioning the absolutely loaded conference tournament coming up. If the Tide are able to hold on to that No. 1 seed, they certainly will have earned it.
Tennessee closes with Alabama, at Ole Miss and South Carolina. A win on Saturday might just put them in the driver’s seat to lock up a No. 1 seed, assuming they don’t repeat an early exit in the SEC Tournament.
“Everybody this time of year obviously is talking about (seeding),” Rick Barnes said on Friday. “But we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done the work you need to do early in the year. So the same focus that you talk about back then, you talk about the importance of those games.
“After those games, you scrub them out and then you talk about how you got to continue to get better. It doesn’t change. We’ve all got a system and the way we do things, but the fact that we’re in this position, it’s still about the process that we believe in, what we go through and being focused on today.”
Tennessee has been a No. 2 seed four times in program history, twice coming under Rick Barnes. The other two times came under Bruce Pearl. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi currently has Tennessee as the fifth overall seed in the tournament, as of Friday afternoon. Houston and Florida are the other two players in this equation, and we assume Auburn and Duke are virtual locks to keep their standing as one seeds.
Tip-off between Tennessee and Alabama is set for 4 p.m. today on ESPN.