Vols T logoKNOXVILLE – While a thin blanket of snow covered the ground in Knoxville, Tennessee’s men’s basketball team was 800 miles away, waking up to a picturesque view of the sun-drenched, sandy beaches of the Bahamas.
The Volunteers aren’t in the Caribbean for the views, though.
For this edition of its annual early-season tournament, Tennessee is in the Battle 4 Atlantis, and the Vols will play the first of three games over the next three days in the nightcap of tonight’s first-round games against UTEP.
In its second game Friday, Tennessee will face either Big Ten contender Iowa or Xavier, which is 5-0 and handed the Vols a season-opening loss in Cincinnati just 16 days ago, and the other half of the bracket includes four power-conference opponents, most notably second-ranked Kansas.
“I feel like we didn’t have a very good showing against Xavier,” Vols forward Jarnell Stokes said this week, “so this is our chance to sort of redeem ourselves.