Ranking Tennessee Vols sports worst affected by coronavirus ending season

2. Men’s Tennis

As we said, tennis was doing well on both fronts. However, the Tennessee Vols men’s tennis program was dominating when things got shut down, and that made it much more devastating for them. As a result, we have this program ranked No. 2 on the list. There’s a chance that, with time, it could have made it up to No. 1 on the list.

However, we’ll never know how high they could have gotten. When the season ended, Rocky Top was No. 12 in the Oracle/ITA Division I Men’s Tennis team rankings. Now, that was fourth in the SEC, behind the Florida Gators, Texas A&M Aggies and Georgia Bulldogs, but those schools were No. 9, 10 and 11 respectively. So they were all on the same playing field.

UT was 14-2 overall and 2-1 in the SEC when play ended, and their only conference loss was a close one to that Georgia team on the road. Their only other loss was to the Columbia Lions, and they had impressive wins over the Duke Blue Devils and Ole Miss Rebels. So they had proven themselves to be legitimate before everything that happened.

With SEC play just underway, it’s likely that the program was about to have many more chances to prove itself over time. After making it to Super Regionals last year, we can’t say for sure if they would have matched their effort. But they likely would have gotten close. That’s why we have them so high up on this list.