March Madness: Remembering Vols 5 Sweet 16 games this century

The Tennessee Volunteers have played in five Sweet Sixteen games of the NCAA Tournament since 2000. Here’s a look back at those March Madness outings.

The regional semifinals of March Madness aren’t a common thing for Tennessee basketball. In fact, the Vols have only made it to the Sweet 16 seven times in their history. Entering this century they had only made it twice in school history.

Adding to that, though, the Vols had never made the Sweet 16 with the NCAA Tournament field expanded to 64 teams until 2000. Since then, they have made it five times, which as we have mentioned in previous posts, represents the overall upward trajectory of the program.

However, once they reach the Sweet 16, they usually have a good bit of bad luck, even dating back to before 2000. That’s where they have been victimized by the curse of March Madness, starting with their first semifinal appearance in 1967, when they were upset by Dayton 53-52.

Historically, the Vols are 1-6 in semifinal games and 1-4 since 2000. Before this century, they had that lost to Dayton and then suffered a loss to the Virginia Cavaliers in 1981. But that was a14-point loss to a No. 1 seed, so it was understandable.

In this post, we’re going to look at the five Sweet 16 games the Vols have played this century. Four of them have come down to the final seconds, and UT was the favorite in two of these games. But nothing has been predictable with this team once it gets to the second win.

This post won’t be a ranking. We’ll just go in reverse order of all five games they have played in this round since 2000. Their five games have been with three different head coaches, and this year will be a sixth game with a fourth head coach.

It at least marks a program that has the infrastructure in place to get there regardless of the coach. But it still hasn’t marked a program that can avoid the craziness coming with playing in this weekend’s games.

So let’s go ahead and break down all of that March Madness here. It has a lot of bad and some good. This is a look back at the five Sweet 16 games the Tennessee Vols have played in the NCAA Tournament this century.