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Selection Sunday: Tennessee Vols earn No. 3 seed in NCAA Tournament

By Caleb Calhoun

ST LOUIS, MO - MARCH 10: Rick Barnes the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers gives instructions to his team against the Arkansas Razorbacks during the semifinals of the 2018 SEC Basketball Tournament at Scottrade Center on March 10, 2018 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
ST LOUIS, MO - MARCH 10: Rick Barnes the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers gives instructions to his team against the Arkansas Razorbacks during the semifinals of the 2018 SEC Basketball Tournament at Scottrade Center on March 10, 2018 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) /
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Selection Sunday’s bracket revealed the Tennessee Volunteers are a three-seed in the Big Dance and will face Wright St. in the first round of March Madness.

The NCAA Selection Sunday bracket has been revealed. And mere hours after losing the SEC Tournament championship game to the Kentucky Wildcats, Tennessee basketball realized where it would be heading in the NCAA Tournament.

The Vols earned a No. 3 seed in the South Region and will face the No. 14 seeded Wright State Raiders, who won the Horizon League Tournament championship. The two will face each other Thursday in Dallas.

Also in their first weekend bracket are the No. 6 seed Miami Hurricanes and the No. 11 seed Loyola-Chicago Ramblers, champions of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament. Tennessee will face the winner of the game between those two on Saturday.

The Selection Sunday bracket also revealed that Rick Barnes’s team is in the same region as the No. 1 seed Virginia Cavaliers. Kentucky, a No. 5 seed, is the only other SEC team in that region.

Barnes’s former team, the Texas Longhorns, are also in this region as a No. 10 seed. Other interesting teams on their side include the Kansas State Wildcats and the Cincinnati Bearcats.

Tennessee was among eight SEC teams to make the tournament. That’s a record for the conference.

On top of that, they achieved the highest seed of anybody in the tournament at No. 3. It’s the first No. 3 seed they’ve ever achieved and the third highest seed they ever reached in school history. They earned two No. 2 seeds in the Bruce Pearl era.

In addition to Virginia, the other No. 1 seeds are the Xavier Musketeers, the Kansas Jayhawks and the Villanova Wildcats, who beat the Vols earlier in the year. Tennessee could have at least been a two-seed again, but Sunday’s loss to Kentucky cost them.

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