Tennessee basketball 2019-2020 season recap: Vols top five wins

A 17-14 record for Tennessee basketball still brought some amazing victories. Here are the 2019-20 Volunteers’ five most memorable games of the year.

With 17 regular season wins overall and nine SEC wins, Tennessee basketball definitely took a step back this year. Of course, they didn’t get to play any SEC Tournament or NCAA Tournament games, but the Vols were clearly not going to match the production of either of the previous two teams that finished in the top 25 anyway.

Rick Barnes’ team really had no chance, to be fair. They lost four of their top six producers from last year, and one of their only two returning major contributors, Lamonte Turner, had season-ending shoulder surgery back in December.

Meanwhile, Uros Plavsic did not get his expected eligibility waiver until January, and five-star Josiah-Jordan James played all year banged up while missing some action. Simply put, Tennessee basketball had lots of things working against it.

However, the Vols still managed some impressive wins on the year. They beat three teams who were in the top 25 when they played them, although only one actually finished the season in the top 25, and only two finished with winning records.

There were other thrilling victories that either came down to the wire or just involved Rocky Top putting on a show. In this post, we’re going to break down all of the best wins of this transition year for the Vols.

Our main criteria to judge these wins will be degree of difficulty. That mainly includes the quality of the opponent, but it also includes where the game was played. The level of thrill in a win will also play a role, and in somewhat of an opposite criteria, a game memorable for how impressive the Vols looked could also be on here.

Taking all that into account, lets relive UT’s best parts of Barnes’ fifth year with the expectations that there will be even more next year. These are Tennessee basketball’s five best wins of the 2019-2020 season.