Randy Smith: It Was A Great Year For Tennessee Basketball

Sadly, it's all over. Both the Tennessee men's and women's basketball teams were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament this weekend. The men were defeated by number one seed Houston a win away from making the Final Four while the Lady Vols were knocked out of their Sweet 16 match up with top seed Texas. Both teams provided Vols' fans with plenty of excitement but none more exciting than the Lady Vols' upset of UConn, a day after Coach Kim Caldwell gave birth to her first child.

The real sadness comes in when you consider that Vols' Coach Rick Barnes still hasn't won a national title. He's the winningest active D-! coach in the country but still hasn't been able to secure a national championship ring. After spending several weeks on top of the polls, Tennessee fans were thinking this year's squad was good enough to go all the way but the Houston Cougars presented some match-up problems the Vols simply couldn't overcome. In addition to those match-up problems, the Voluinteers looked as if they were out of gas following that tremendous win over rival Kentucky after the Wildcats had beaten them twice during the regular season. Nobody could shoot even though they cut the Cougars' lead from 22 down to 9 in the second half. It was almost as if they were playing in mud against Houston. They had expended so much energy in the win Friday over Kentucky, they may have had nothing left on Sunday.

On another note, the popular Zachai Zeigler's embrace with Coach Barnes in the media room following the game was very touching. The two had become close during Zeigler's four years in Knoxville, perhaps as close as any player-coach relationship ever. There has been speculation lately that the 72 year old Barnes would retire when Zeigler graduated or left the program but that remains to be seen.

What;s up next for both teams? Well, that depends on what each team can get from the Transfer Portal. They both did very well last year and there's nothing to indicate anything else. Since the inception of the portal teams have been able to win right away, rather than recruiting high school seniors and waiting for them to mature. Coach Caldwell has already locked up some big-time players and Coach Barnes has as well. The bottom line? The kids on both teams have given Tennessee fans a lot of excitement through the year and that's not going to stop anytime soon.