Tennessee all-time SEC Tournament single-game scoring record

After winning the regular season SEC crown, the Tennessee Volunteers have had to wait a while in Nashville before taking the floor. They’ll kick off their SEC Tournament run on Friday against either Mississippi State or LSU in the quarterfinals. 

Tennessee last won the SEC Tournament in 2022 and this time they’re back as the No. 1 seed with the conference’s leading scorer. Rick Barnes has always built his team around defense, but adding Dalton Knecht to orchestrate his offense has turned the Volunteers into a national title contender. First, Knecht will need to lead Tennessee through the SEC Tournament to lock up a No. 1 seed in the big dance, and he may need a few big scoring outputs to do that. 

If the SEC tournament in Nashville ends with a rematch against Kentucky, that’s good news for Knecht, who recently dropped a career-high 40 points on the Wildcats in Knoxville, in a losing effort. 

If that rematch occurs it will almost certainly be another high-scoring affair, possibly eclipsing the highest-scoring game that Tennessee was a part of in SEC Tournament history, which is also the second-highest-scoring game of all-time in the league’s postseason. 

Or Tennessee’s highest-scoring effort in a win from March 9, 2016, in the first round of the SEC tournament. 

Now, for the Vols to hit those ridiculous point totals and stick with this year’s Kentucky team, which plays at light speed, Knecht will have to take over. He already has the second-highest single-game point total in Tennessee history with his 40, but has yet to etch his name into the SEC Tournament record book. Here are Tennessee’s highest individual single-game point totals in SEC Tournament history.