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Tennessee basketball: Comparing Vols to last Rick Barnes team that reached No. 1

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - DECEMBER 22: Head coach Rick Barnes of the Tennessee Volunteers reacts to a play during the first half of the game against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons at Thompson-Boling Arena on December 22, 2018 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Donald Page/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - DECEMBER 22: Head coach Rick Barnes of the Tennessee Volunteers reacts to a play during the first half of the game against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons at Thompson-Boling Arena on December 22, 2018 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Donald Page/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images /

Tennessee basketball’s No. 1 ranking is a second for Rick Barnes. Here is how the Volunteers resemble that Texas Longhorns team to reach the top.

When Tennessee basketball reached No. 1 in both polls Monday, it marked the second season in Rick Barnes’s career that he led a team atop the rankings. It was also the second time the Vols ever reached that mark.

Those two things were, ironically, less than two years apart. The Vols reached No. 1 under Bruce Pearl in February of 2008. Texas, meanwhile, reached in January of 2010. However, we have at least some bit of evidence to compare this year’s Barnes team to.

Looking at that team, how do they compare to the Vols? It’s safe to say that with no national championship and just one Final Four, you want to look at all of Barnes’s teams that have achieved high rankings.

The veteran coach has has eight seasons in which his teams reached the Top 5 and numerous more in which they reached the Top 10. This particular team was the third in a row in which they had reached the Top 5, and they were the first three teams AFTER Kevin Durant left for the NBA.

I’ve been saying for a while that, given Barnes’s history, Vols fans shouldn’t get too far ahead of themselves yet with this early season success. We have a wealth of evidence of Barnes teams collapsing in February and March. Remember, his last seven teams never went further than the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

In this post , we’re going to look at all the ways the two teams compare. This includes the similarities and the differences. On the first slide, we’ll show you how far that last Barnes team went, and then we’ll close out with what it means for UT. So let’s go ahead and look back to analyze the future. This is how this year’s Tennessee basketball team compares to Barnes’s last team to reach No. 1.

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