The Tennessee Volunteers are returning to the scene of the crime.
Tennessee traveled to Florida last January with a 14-0 record and a No. 1 ranking only to get mauled 73-43 by the No. 8 Gators, who would go on to win their third national championship in program history. It was the worst loss by an undefeated, top-ranked team since Elvin Hayes and 31-0 Houston fell to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and UCLA 101-69 at the 1968 Final Four.
It was the worst loss for Tennessee in the Rick Barnes era, which dates to the 2015-16 season, and the worst overall since the Vols were routed 75-45 by Michigan in the first round of the 2011 NCAA tournament, which marked the final game of the Bruce Pearl era.
“Last year, we went down there and didn’t get the job done,” Vols sophomore guard Bishop Boswell said Friday in a news conference. “The mindset this year is totally different.”
Florida scored the first 12 points of last season’s game in Gainesville and led 64-29 with six minutes remaining. The Gators would post a 56-37 rebounding advantage over the Vols, who shot 4-of-29 from 3-point range (13.8%) and made 15 of 25 tries from the free-throw line (60.0%).
The Vols would exact revenge last February with a surprising 64-44 win over Florida in Knoxville, when Tennessee played without senior guard Zakai Zeigler and senior forward Igor Milicic, with the Gators taking the rubber match in March by winning the Southeastern Conference tournament title game 86-77 in Nashville.
Saturday’s noon showdown between No. 21 Tennessee (11-4, 1-1 SEC) and Florida (10-5, 1-1) is sold out and will be televised by ESPN.
“We’re super excited,” Vols redshirt sophomore forward J.P. Estrella, who missed last year’s meetings with Florida due to season-ending foot surgery, said on the Vol Network after Tuesday night’s 85-71 home win over Texas. “Obviously the last time we went in there, we didn’t like the outcome.”
(READ MORE: Barnes after frigid Vols lose by 30: ‘I think this is great for us‘)
The good news for the Vols is that guards Walter Clayton, Alijah Martin and Will Richard have moved on from last season’s Gators. The bad news for Tennessee is that 6-foot-11, 236-pound junior forward Alex Condon, 6-10, 265-pound junior center Rueben Chinyelu, 6-9, 215-pound junior forward Thomas Haugh, and 7-1, 260-pound senior center Micah Handlogten remain on Todd Golden’s roster.
Haugh leads the Gators with 17.5 points per game and is averaging 6.8 rebounds per contest, while Condon is averaging 14.8 and 8.6. Not to be outdone, Chinyelu is averaging a double-double with 10.5 points and 10.3 rebounds a game.
“They have four of them that they can roll in there at you, and they all have experience,” Tennessee associate head coach Justin Gainey said Friday. “They’re older now. They’ve been through the fire. They’ve won a national championship. It’s just a really good collection of post guys.
“Their physicality is going to come at you on every possession. When that ball is up, it’s going to be a battle, and you can’t relax on one play, because that’s all they need to get that offensive rebound and that second shot. It’s a huge part of what they do, and they do it really well.”
Tennessee, which has the inside contingent of the 6-11, 240-pound Estrella, 6-11, 243-pound senior forward Felix Okpara, 6-8, 267-pound junior forward Jaylen Carey, and 6-8, 251-pound freshman forward DeWayne Brown II, currently leads Division I with a 45.2 offensive rebounding percentage. The Gators rank second at 44.2%.
“Felix and J.P. know, and they’ve been talking to the new guys about the level of physicality inside that we’ve got to play with,” Boswell said. “Jaylen was able to play them last season, too, when he was at Vanderbilt, so I think he knows what it takes and how physical we have to be.
“We’ve just got to go down there and show it.”
Carey won’t be the only player new to this rivalry from a transfer standpoint, with Tennessee point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie having played last season at Maryland, and with Florida’s backcourt tandem of 6-3 sophomore Boogie Fland and 6-4 senior Xavier Lee having competed at Arkansas and Princeton, respectively.
“It’s definitely going to be different when you have three guys of the caliber they had last year, but they’ve moved Haugh to the wing, and he’s transitioned nicely,” Gainey said. “Fland has experience in this league, and Lee is getting better by the game.”
Still searching
Tennessee’s 11-4 record to this point can be broken down to 9-0 in the Food City Center, 2-2 in neutral-site contests, and 0-2 in true road games.
The Vols lost at Syracuse in early December in the ACC/SEC Challenge, and they lost at Arkansas last Saturday in their SEC opener.
“We’ve done a good job of protecting our home court, and obviously that’s a big thing for us,” Boswell said, “but we haven’t won a road game yet. That’s something we’re going to have to do if we want to win the SEC, and we’ve just got some stuff that we have to prove to ourselves in this game.”
Odds and ends
Tennessee holds an 82-61 series advantage over Florida and is 9-4 in the past 13 meetings. … The Vols have four wins in their history against teams that eventually won the national championship, with all four coming against the Gators — twice in the 2005-06 season, once in 2006-07 and once last season.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.