The Tennessee Volunteers found themselves on the wrong end of a buzzer beater this week, falling 78-76 to Ole Miss on Wednesday. They responded with a 75-65 win over a scrappy South Carolina team on Saturday in Knoxville to bounce back and end the regular season on a high note.
That win wasn’t enough to reverberate with the voters in both polls, who dropped Tennessee on Monday. Tennessee didn’t just drop a spot. They dropped 4 places in the AP Poll, from 4 to 8. They fell from 4 into a tie with Michigan State for 6th in the Coaches Poll.
That’s a bit of a harsh drop in the AP Poll, as Tennessee lost a very close game on the road to a team who will be playing in the NCAA tournament. Joe Lunardi didn’t even give the Vols that much of a drop, moving Tennessee to the sixth overall seed in the tournament after Alabama’s upset win at Auburn (that same Alabama team that lost to Tennessee a week ago, but whatever).
Fortunately, this is the last poll that will matter until the NCAA tournament is done, and the final polls come out with the tournament winner at #1. Right now, it’s all about tournament seeding, and the Vols are #4 in the SEC tournament, right where UT fans hoped they’d be, as that gives them a bye into the quarterfinals this Friday against either Texas A&M, Texas, or Vanderbilt.
Of course, depending on how the tournament goes in Nashville, Tennessee should be a 2 seed in the Big Dance, with a chance to move up to a 1 seed if they make a deep run this week.