Tennessee Basketball: Vols could take care of unfinished business in 2019-20
The Southeastern Conference has released their schedule for the upcoming season and Tennessee will face off against plenty of familiar opponents.
Tennessee has three permanent home-and-home matchups that they are guaranteed to participate in each year. Kentucky, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt are those three teams for the Vols. Tennessee will also play a home-and-home series with Arkansas and Auburn. This is the first time Tennessee will have a home-and-home series with Bruce Pearl‘s Auburn Tigers since the 2015-16 season. Since then it seems like Pearl’s Auburn teams have had Rick Barnes‘ number including topping the Vols in last season’s SEC Championship game.
Rick Barnes has found himself in a difficult situation where he is trying to rebuild from losing four starters who combined for nearly 60 points last season while also continuing to win games. This is the first time Barnes has had to deal with that at such a high level at Tennessee. Pearl has had Barnes’ number in recent years, but Barnes has had John Calipari‘s number in the past few years as well.
The Kentucky-Tennessee rivalry has heated up in the past few years as Barnes has brought Tennessee back to a highly competitive level. Last season, the Wildcats walked into Thompson-Bowling Arena and laid the hammer down on Tennessee. The Vols returned the favor a week later in Lexington, but that blow out loss at home still leaves me with a nasty taste in my mouth.
Last year, Tennessee took care of business in their series against South Carolina and Vanderbilt with a clean sweep against both opponents. Vanderbilt doesn’t seem like a team you should stress about too much, but with new head coach Jerry Stackhouse who knows how good Vanderbilt will be out of the gates. Even if Vanderbilt isn’t very good, they can’t be any worse than they were last season and as bad as the Commodores were they almost beat top-ranked Tennessee in Nashville. Vanderbilt brings everything they have to the table when Tennessee comes to town so I wouldn’t overlook that game so quickly.
Tennessee will be traveling to some tough places they haven’t had much success at in the past as well. The Vols will travel to Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi State, and Missouri. The Vols are a combined 6-8 in the last five seasons when traveling to each of those places. Tennessee has struggled most when facing Alabama and Mississippi State on the road.
The home schedule seems very appealing based on the team’s performance last season. Florida, LSU, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M will be the SEC programs coming to Knoxville. Tennessee was able to escape Ole Miss and win that game late on the road, but the same can’t be said in their game against LSU. That loss was a heartbreaking one for Tennessee and brought a little controversy along with it. Sparks began to fly towards the end of that game, leaving both programs ready to meet again, this time in Knoxville.
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Tennessee has a pretty tough schedule; they will play seven games against top-5 SEC teams in the upcoming season. It could be a long season for the Vols if Barnes doesn’t play his cards right, but if he does, he could once again be ahead of schedule. Regardless, Tennessee has some unfinished business against most of these teams, and Barnes will look to take care of that business with virtually a whole new squad.