Has there ever been a better week to be a Tennessee Vol?
Your football team just made the College Football Playoff, albeit with a tough road trip to Ohio State. Brrrrrrrr! Your men’s basketball team was just ranked No. 1 in the latest Associated Press poll and has a good chance to remain there until at least mid-January. Even the undefeated (7-0) Lady Vols basketball team - once the most reliably ranked program on Rocky Top - has returned to the AP women’s poll for the first time since November 23 of 2023, a span of 22 polls and 381 days.
And, of course, a lot of folks in Big Orange Country are still basking in the glow of last June’s NCAA baseball crown.
But what happens from here? Can the football team win its first national championship since 1998? Can the men’s basketball team reach its first-ever Final Four, and better yet, cut down the nets on an April Monday night in San Antonio? And what is the Lady Vols’ ceiling? Sweet 16? Elite Eight? Final Four? A ninth natty?
Let’s start with football.
You can’t win it unless you’re in it, and while an opening-round game inside the Buckeyes’ famed Horseshoe at 8 p.m. on December 21 isn’t the ideal pairing for a team from the sunny mid-South, the suspicion from these parts that the Big Ten is overrated could play in the Vols’ favor.
If the defensive line can pressure OSU quarterback Will Howard in much the same way it has most teams, thus preventing the super elite Buckeyes receivers from haunting the Vols secondary, UT just might pull the upset of the opening weekend and advance to the Rose Bowl to face top-seeded and undefeated Oregon. When you have the nation’s fourth ranked defense - even though OSU is No. 1 - you always have a chance.
As UT coach Josh Heupel noted on a Zoom call earlier this week: "Now it's about taking advantage of the opportunity we have. The only thing that matters is that Saturday night inside of that stadium in Columbus, Ohio. We've played in big games, and we've got to go be ready to handle everything that we're going to face that night."
The last time the Vols faced a similar situation in a hostile environment dominated by an opponent wearing red and gray was when they traveled to Georgia in November and lost XXX. The crowd will be similarly inhospitable on Dec. 21, but the Bulldogs seem to have an edge and will to win the Buckeyes lack, so that Rose Bowl date doesn’t seem unattainable at the moment.
Now to the basketball Vols, the top-ranked team in the top-ranked league in the country. The SEC is being projected by a lot of experts to wind up with as many as 12 teams from a 16-team league in the NCAA Tournament. If that becomes true, it will eclipse the 11 the Big East had more than a decade ago. Given the Vols’ routs at Louisville (77-55) and against Baylor (77-62) already this season, tonight’s Jimmy V Classic game against Miami at 6:30 (ESPN) at Madison Square Garden should be a breeze, though Saturday’s game at Illinois could be a struggle.
After that, expect the first big challenge of the SEC season to come on a Tuesday night in Gainesville, Florida, against the Gators.
"We've already talked about it (being No. 1) , and it doesn't mean a whole lot other than the fact it's a compliment to the start we've gotten off to," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said when the rankings came out. "They want to be No. 1 at the end of the year. You realize it can help you get better because of the challenges you're going to see all year long. It is what it is, and you deal with it."
After losing four of five starters from last year’s Elite Eight team, no one expected the Vols to be this good, especially this early. But they have a gifted, veteran point guard in Zakai Zeigler and a special talent in wing in Nashville native Chaz Lanier, who may actually be a more athletic version of Dalton Knecht, and almost assuredly better on defense.
Does that mean this Tennessee team is destined to reach the Final Four for the first time ever? As always, injuries, or lack thereof, will play a factor. And when SEC coaches adjust to the Vols, can the Vols adjust to those adjustments? The 70-year-old Barnes’ track record suggests they can.
No one’s won both a football title and men’s basketball crown since Florida in 2006. But then, as now, being from the SEC is a good preparation for national success.
It’s a long season. A lot can go wrong and right for football, men’s basketball and the resurgent Lady Vols before trophies are handed out.
But between now and then, there’s plenty of reason for the Big Orange Nation to dream big again, maybe all the way to another baseball season.
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