All for Tennessee
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Tennessee Lady Vols in NCAA Tournament due to brand, not resume

By Caleb Calhoun

DALLAS, TX - MARCH 15: Smokey, the mascot of the Tennessee Volunteers, performs during a time out in the second half against the Wright State Raiders in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at American Airlines Center on March 15, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
DALLAS, TX - MARCH 15: Smokey, the mascot of the Tennessee Volunteers, performs during a time out in the second half against the Wright State Raiders in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at American Airlines Center on March 15, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) /
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The Tennessee Lady Vols are a No. 11 seed in the women’s basketball NCAA Tournament, keeping their streak alive. But it was due to the Volunteers’ brand.

So it didn’t come to an end for the Tennessee Lady Vols. Their mark of never missing an NCAA Tournament continues, after news broke Monday that they would be a No. 11 seed in the Albany, N.Y. region. It broke in an unconventional way, as the bracket was revealed before the Selection Show on ESPN2. Maybe putting Tennessee in there broke everything and cause the confusion.

No. 11 is the lowest seed UT ever had, and they will face the No. 6 seed UCLA Bruins in College Park, Md. in the first round on Saturday. The winner of that game will face the winner between the No. 3 seeded Maryland Terrapins and the No. 14 seed Radford Highlanders on Monday, still in College Park. The Louisville Cardinals are the No. 1 seed in that region.

Make no mistake, Holly Warlick’s team got lucky. They had no business being in the NCAA Tournament with their resume. The only reasonable explanation is the brand name of the Tennessee Lady Vols and what they’ve meant to women’s college basketball.

This is a team that finished 19-12 and a schedule strength outside of the top 30. Their best wins are at the Texas Longhorns and at the Missouri Tigers, and only one of those is in the top 25 in any rankings. Texas is No. 23.

Does anybody believe that this team is going to make any noise in the tournament? Shouldn’t the potential to make a deep run be a qualification? There is no reasonable person who saw this team play all season and thinks that to be a possibility.

One of the teams the Lady Vols got in over was the Arkansas Razorbacks. If the selection committee placed any value on conference tournament games and applied them towards the overall resume, this one would make no sense.

Arkansas has one ore top 25 win than Tennessee. Their schedule strengths are relatively similar. They have one more win. And finally, in the one head to head match-up between the two schools, the Hogs won in Rocky Top. The only thing favoring the Lady Vols is the RPI difference.

But if we go there, what about the TCU Horned Frogs? Sure, their schedule strength was a bigger drop than Arkansas’s. But they beat the same number of top 25 teams, one, and they finished 20-10. In fact, they actually had a higher RPI than the Tennessee Lady Vols. So by resume, Arkansas beats Tennessee. By RPI, TCU beats them. But Tennessee somehow gets in over both.

Finally, you have the Ohio Bobcats. Okay, so this schedule strength is a major drop-off at No. 91. But, again, their RPI is significantly higher than UT’s at No. 34. And they have a way better at 27-5. The only selling point for the Lady Vols here is Ohio’s lack of top 25 wins.

So there’s one thing that favors Tennessee over each of these teams, but you have to keep resetting the standard to make sure they get their seeding. And that’s exactly what the selection committee did here to make sure they got into the tournament.

It’s worth noting that nobody on this list has a loss as bad as the Tennessee Lady Vols, who fell at home to the Vanderbilt Commodores. Should that not count for something? Well, it doesn’t if you have the brand of the Tennessee Lady Vols. This team has no business being in the NCAA Tournament, and it’s embarrassing for the sport they got in.

Next. Vols basketball's road to the Final Four. dark

Lady Vols fans may take it as a bad thing too. After all, many of them want an excuse for Warlick to be fired, and getting into another NCAA Tournament could be enough for Phillip Fulmer to keep her on board. Whether or not that matters, it’s clear they don’t belong in the Big Dance this year. Their brand got them in.