Tennessee has entered the Texas A&M portion of its basketball schedule.
The No. 6 Volunteers will play the Aggies twice in their next five games, with the first of those meetings taking place Saturday in College Station (8 p.m. Eastern on ESPN). Tennessee defeated Texas A&M 65-50 in the championship game of the 2022 Southeastern Conference tournament in Tampa, Florida, but the Aggies held serve at home last February 68-63, which was their only meeting of the season.
Tennessee will host Texas A&M on Feb. 24.
“This time of year, all wins are huge,” Vols assistant coach Justin Gainey said Friday in a news conference, “but these are must wins for the home team, because you’ve got to take care of your home court. Texas A&M is a good team wanting to get to the NCAA tournament, and if you want to get there, you’ve got to take care of your home court.
“That’s the same way we feel. We have a sense of urgency when we’re at home, and we come in expecting everybody’s best punch this time of year.”
The Vols improved to 17-5 overall and to 7-2 in SEC play with Wednesday night’s 88-68 drubbing of visiting LSU. Longtime ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi on Thursday projected Tennessee as the fourth No. 1 seed for next month’s NCAA tournament, but he replaced the Vols with Arizona on Friday after the Wildcats won at Utah 105-99 in triple overtime Thursday night.
Purdue, Connecticut, Houston and Arizona are now Lunardi’s 1 seeds, with Tennessee, North Carolina, Kansas and Marquette the 2 seeds.
Lunardi projects Texas A&M (14-8, 5-4) as a 10 seed, so the slower-paced Aggies could enhance their NCAA fortunes significantly with a Saturday surprise. Texas A&M tops the conference in rebound margin at plus-9.9 per game and possesses the veteran guard tandem of Wade Taylor IV (19.7 point per game) and Tyrece Radford (14.3).
Rebounding was an issue for the Vols on Wednesday, with LSU posting a 40-26 advantage that was 40-21 at one point. Trae Hannibal, a 6-foot-2 senior guard, led the Tigers with 11.
“There were some weird misses,” Gainey said. “There were a couple of airballs and a couple off the front rim that came off fast, but for the most part it was long shots that equalled long rebounds, and they did a good job of not necessarily grabbing the ball but smacking it out when we were trying to catch it.
“It was also unique that Hannibal, who’s a point guard, crashed the glass really hard. Most of the time the point guard gets back, so you don’t really have to account for him, but in this instance he was crashing and crashing hard.”
The learning curve
Cameron Carr, a 6-5, 175-pound guard from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has played only 35 minutes this season, which ranks fourth among Vols freshmen, behind forward J.P. Estrella (82), guard Freddie Dilione V (66) and forward Cade Phillips (60).
Carr, who is just 3-of-16 (18.8%) from the floor and 2-of-12 (16.7%) from 3-point range this season, was asked Friday about the adjustment to this level.
“It’s very hard,” he said. “I expected it to be hard, and it was 10 times harder once I got here. I’m still just trying to figure things out. I’m not butthurt that I’m not playing more.
“I’m just kind of taking this as a learning curve knowing that I’m going to get there eventually.”
Odds and ends
Tennessee and Texas A&M were picked 1-2 in the SEC preseason poll this past October. … The Vols are averaging 83.5 points per game in 10 contests so far in 2024. … Tennessee coach Rick Barnes is 31-10 lifetime against the Aggies.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.