KNOXVILLE – Saturday night, top-ranked Tennessee will have a basketball matchup against No. 5 Kentucky at Rupp Arena. ESPN’s “College Gameday” will be in attendance, as the Southeastern Conference has two teams in the top five of the men’s polls for the first time since Florida and LSU were there in the 2006-07 preseason list.
There’s plenty of time for the hype, but there’s work to be done prior.
Tennessee hosts South Carolina at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in another key SEC contest. The Volunteers – 22-1 overall and 10-0 in the SEC while riding an 18-game win streak – already have a victory against the Gamecocks, 92-70 in Columbia on Jan. 29.
“I think any time you go against South Carolina, you know that they’re going to play an extremely hard and physical game, and I think everybody knows that,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Monday. “We fully expect it. They compete as hard as anybody that you’re going to play against, and that’s what we expect.”
The Gamecocks are only 12-11 overall but are 7-3 in the SEC – three games behind the Vols and two games behind Kentucky and LSU going into those teams’ meeting Tuesday night. In the loss to Tennessee, South Carolina battled back from a 10-point early-second-half deficit to within 60-58 until the Vols responded with an 11-3 run and ended the game on a 19-6 spurt.