KNOXVILLE – The Tennessee men’s basketball schedule will include one of the nation’s top mid-major programs for the next two seasons.
Volunteers officials announced Tuesday they had agreed to a two-year home-and-home series with Butler beginning with the Bulldogs’ trip to Knoxville this December. Tennessee will visit the Indianapolis program’s famous Hinkle Fieldhouse in December of the 2015-16 season.
In its first season in the Big East Conference after moving from the Horizon League, Butler went 14-17 and finished ninth in the new-look 10-team league, ahead of DePaul. It was the Bulldogs’ first season under Brad Stevens’ replacement Brandon Miller. Stevens just finished his first season as coach of the NBA’s Boston Celtics.
Tennessee and Butler are two of 13 men’s programs to have reached the Sweet 16 four times in the last eight seasons. Under Stevens, the Bulldogs played in the national championship game in 2010 and 2011 and lost both times, to Duke and Connecticut. Butler has been to the NCAA tournament in six of the last eight seasons.
The Vols won the last meeting between the two programs in the secound round of the 2008 NCAA tournament.