Tennessee basketball endangered by Florida back on schedule

A lot can happen to this Tennessee basketball program within a week. Last Friday, we wrote about the possibility of the Vols entering the SEC Tournament on a four-game winning streak given their easy slate to close out the season and how good they looked on Wednesday, Feb. 17 against the South Carolina Gamecocks.

Then they lost to the Kentucky Wildcats, a below .500 team, at home in a blowout Saturday. On Wednesday, they needed to hold off the Vanderbilt Commodores, another below .500 team that was within two scores of them in the final three minutes despite missing its top two scorers.

Now, with the way they have looked and a scheduling update, Tennessee basketball may enter the postseason on a losing streak and, as we warned on Monday, has the chance to fall to a bubble team. It looks that bad.

The SEC announced Thursday that the Vols will make up their rematch with the Florida Gators at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, Tenn. on March 7. This game was originally slated to take place on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Does anybody remember what happened the first time Rick Barnes’ team faced Mike White’s team this year? White got the advantage with a 75-49 victory. Given that score and how UT has looked recently, it’s hard to have faith in them to beat Florida at home.

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Florida, though is one of two games left on the schedule. The first of those two comes this Saturday, when the Vols visit the Auburn Tigers. Former Tennessee basketball head coach Bruce Pearl is on a five-game winning streak against his former school dating back to 2018, and all of those games have proven costly.

Sure, Auburn is 11-13, 5-10 in the SEC and in the midst of a postseason ban, but UT is one program they always seem to dominate under Pearl. In recent years, that dominance has proven costly as well.

Auburn cost the Vols the regular season SEC Championship outright by beating them in Knoxville in 2018. A year later, they cost them a share of the regular season SEC Championship by beating them on the last day of the regular season. Then they cost them the SEC Tournament championship by beating them in the finale.

Last year, the Tigers swept the Vols, and that would have proven costly had there been an NCAA Tournament because just one win would have moved them to the bubble and as a likely in team. Simply put, this program has cost Barnes in every way.

Sitting at 16-6 and just 9-6 in the SEC, the Vols are ranked No. 25 in the AP Poll and unranked in the Coaches Poll. Given Auburn’s history and what Florida already did to them this year, they could easily limp into the postseason at 16-8, 9-8 in the SEC and having lost three out of four games.

At that point, what we said on Tuesday comes true, and Tennessee basketball will be in serious danger of falling to the NCAA Tournament bubble. For a team that returned its All-SEC center and the SEC Defensive Player of the Year while adding two transfers and a top five recruiting class, that’s just an embarrassing way to end things.