All for Tennessee
Fansided

Tennessee basketball: 5 reasons Vols should win the SEC Tournament

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - MARCH 02: Grant Williams #2 of the Tennessee Volunteers celebrates in the game against the Kentucky Wildcats at Thompson-Boling Arena on March 02, 2019 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - MARCH 02: Grant Williams #2 of the Tennessee Volunteers celebrates in the game against the Kentucky Wildcats at Thompson-Boling Arena on March 02, 2019 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 6
Next
Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images
Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images /

Tennessee basketball enters the men’s SEC Tournament as a No. 3 seed in 2019. Here are five reasons the Volunteers should take home the championship.

Despite their longest period with a No. 1 ranking in school history, an 11-0 SEC start and already more wins than last year, Tennessee basketball enters the SEC Tournament as just a No. 3 seed with its 15-3 league record. That’s lower than their No. 2 seed last year, as they couldn’t capture a share of the regular season title this time around either, which they did last year.

All of this shows you how improved the league is overall and how elite it is at the top. Nonetheless, Rick Barnes’s 27-4 team is actually the slight favorite to win the tournament according to the oddsmakers.

So Tennessee basketball will begin play Friday still with sky-high expectations. And quite honestly, they should have those expectations. Even with a bit of a rocky finish to the season, there is still every reason to bet on the Vols.

They have given mountains of data to prove why they are actually the best team in the league. And they actually enter the conference tournament with significant advantages over other programs with a real chance to win it.

In this post, we’re going to break down those advantages. We will look at them to analyze why the Vols should win their first SEC Tournament championship in exactly 40 years. That was Don DeVoe’s first season with the program.

Things have changed a lot since then, but Barnes, unlike DeVoe, is lucky not to be following a legend like Ray Mears. Even so, he should be able to win what would be his first conference tournament title since his days at Providence.

Why is that the case? What is different about this year for UT’s head coach and it’s men’s basketball program? Let’s go ahead and break all of that down.These are five reasons Tennessee basketball should win the SEC Tournament championship.

Home/Vols Basketball