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Tennessee basketball: 5 disadvantages Vols face in the SEC Tournament

By Caleb Calhoun

DALLAS, TX - MARCH 17: Jordan Bowden #23 of the Tennessee Volunteers reacts after losing to the Loyola Ramblers 63-62 in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament at the American Airlines Center on March 17, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
DALLAS, TX - MARCH 17: Jordan Bowden #23 of the Tennessee Volunteers reacts after losing to the Loyola Ramblers 63-62 in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament at the American Airlines Center on March 17, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /
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Tennessee basketball is the favorite to win the Southeastern Conference Tournament championship. Here are five things working against the Volunteers.

Las Vegas may be favoring Tennessee basketball to win the SEC Tournament Championship. They may have the best overall record of any team in the conference. And yes, they may be healthy, loaded with experience and playing the game in Nashville.

But the 27-4 Vols are still the No. 3 seed in the SEC Tournament with their 15-3 record overall. And they aren’t the highest ranked team. The Kentucky Wildcats are. So there are clearly things working against them as they get set for postseason play.

The Vols will be the last team in the league to actually play a tournament game, as they won’t face anybody until the final game of Friday night. Despite so many things working in their favor, you can’t just assume they’re good to go.

After not winning the SEC regular season championship, Tennessee basketball is going to want to win the tournament title just to get some trophy for this year before the NCAA Tournament. And such trophies are indicative.

Since the beginning of this century, only two teams, the Duke Blue Devils in 2015 and the UCONN Huskies in 2014, won the national championship without winning a share of their conference regular season title or their conference tournament title. Before that, nobody had done it

Outside of those two teams, the only four to win it without winning either title since the NCAA expanded its tournament to 64 teams are the Arizona Wildcats in 1997, the Michigan Wolverines in 1989, the Kansas Jayhawks 1988 and the Villanova Wildcats in 1985. By the way, Arizona and Michigan didn’t even have conference tournaments those years.

Simply, put, it’s incredibly rare when a team with neither conference title wins the national title. But the Vols, despite that pressure, may not be able to pull through. There are some things working against them, and we’re going to break them down in this post. These are five disadvantages working against Tennessee basketball in the SEC Tournament.

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