Men’s basketball SEC Power Rankings for Jan. 22: Vols lose ground

Last week: Lost to Missouri Tigers; Defeated South Carolina Gamecocks

Last rank: 2nd

The Tennessee Vols did drop two spots in our SEC Power Rankings because of that loss to the Missouri Tigers. This wasn’t so much a knock on them as a team or a program. We just couldn’t put them in the same elite category as other teams on a roll right now.

Still, Rick Barnes’s group is clearly in the upper-echelon of the conference. And to be honest, they have played one of the most brutal schedules in the conference and outside of the conference. That’s a huge reason they’ve been a bit inconsistent.

With all of that, they are 13-5 overall and 4-3 in the SEC. Not one of their losses has come to a team outside of the Top 40 in the RPI, and their No. 4 strength of schedule has them at No. 12 in the RPI overall.

So it would take a catastrophic thing for them to not make the NCAA Tournament at this point. And that was always supposed to be the only goal with so many underclassmen who don’t have NBA bodies on the team.

It’s also hard to understate how huge the win over the South Carolina Gamecocks on the road was last week to follow up the loss to Mizzou. We said the plus for Tennessee basketball would be to split those two games, and that’s exactly what they did.

Going forward, they now have a chance at a huge winning streak. This week, they have an easy home game against the Vanderbilt Commodores and then face the Iowa State Cyclones on the road. Both of those should be wins.

And then they have, finally, an easy stretch next week with the Ole Miss Rebels and LSU Tigers at home. As a result, these guys should have a five-game winning streak to get to 17-5 and 7-3 in the SEC before traveling to Lexington for another match-up with Kentucky.