Tennessee entered Sunday afternoon’s Southeastern Conference tournament championship game inside Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena hoping that a win over Florida would enable the Volunteers to slip past the Gators as the fourth and final No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament.
The Gators weren’t thinking along those same lines.
Using its size, depth and talent that may prove to be unmatched in the weeks ahead, second-seeded Florida powered past fourth-seeded Tennessee 86-77 to win its first SEC tourney title since 2014 while denying the Vols their second such crown in four seasons. Tennessee (27-7) on Sunday night received the 2 seed in the NCAA’s Midwest Region and will open play Thursday against 15th-seeded Wofford (6:50 p.m. on TNT) at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.
“I’m very confident in our team,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. “I could sit here and say right now we just got beat by the best team in the country, and it was a three-possession game. I can also come up with three or four things that we can’t do. That’s how fine a line it is.
“This has been a fun team to coach. I want more for them, and I know they want more.”