Tennessee’s Admiral Schofield shoots over Mississippi State’s Robert Woodard during the Vols’ 71-54 home win Tuesday. Tennessee has won three straight games going into its regular-season finale at Auburn.KNOXVILLE – Although the Tennessee men’s basketball team will play its regular-season finale Saturday, the Volunteers’ games began to take on a postseason feel three weeks ago.
It was then that their schedule, which for a month had been relatively easy compared to many programs, became more difficult. Ahead of the Vols were two meetings with Kentucky and one each with Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State and Ole Miss – all of them currently projected to make the NCAA tournament – plus a home date against struggling Vanderbilt.
The Vols were still ranked No. 1 when they were humbled in an 86-69 loss at Kentucky on Feb. 16, ending their program-record winning streak after 19 games. They rebounded with a 58-46 home win against Vanderbilt three days later, then played much better than they had at Kentucky when they visited LSU on Feb. 23, but Tennessee’s defensive and mental lapses led to the Tigers pulling out a last-second 82-80 overtime victory in Baton Rouge.
The loss in Lexington appears to have been the game-changer, though, because it made the Vols realize what they had been doing wasn’t going to be good enough to contend for championships. They changed, they adjusted, they got better.
And now they have a chance to at least share the Southeastern Conference title for the second straight season.
Saturday is the final day of the SEC’s regular season, and Tennessee and LSU enter it tied atop the league standings. The fifth-ranked Vols (27-3, 15-2) play at Auburn (21-9, 10-7) at noon EST, while 10th-ranked LSU (25-5, 15-2) hosts Vanderbilt (9-21, 0-17) at 8:30 p.m. EST.
Even if Tennessee wins, because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, LSU would secure the top seed at next week’s SEC tournament in Nashville if it beats Vanderbilt, though the Vols and LSU would share the regular-season title. A Tennessee win and an LSU loss would give the regular-season title outright to the Vols, who shared last year’s championship with Auburn.
Sixth-ranked Kentucky (25-5, 14-3) hosts Florida (17-13, 9-8) at 2 p.m., needing losses by LSU and Tennessee to force a three-way tie atop the league standings. LSU beat Kentucky 73-71 in their only meeting this season.
As for the Vols, after losing at LSU, they won 73-71 at Ole Miss on Feb. 27 and completed their home schedule with wins against Kentucky, 71-52 last Saturday, and Mississippi State, 71-54 on Tuesday.
“In Lexington, it really humbled us,” Tennessee senior guard Admiral Schofield said after Tuesday’s win. “It was the start of us really locking in and understanding what we needed to do defensively to hold teams under a certain amount of points so we could really play freely on the offensive end. Our intensity started at the Ole Miss game and carried into the second Kentucky game – we had extra motivation to finish that one the way we did.
“If you want to be a championship team, you have to play championship basketball, and I think we did that for most of the night.”
Tennessee’s past three opponents shot a combined 36 percent, with Kentucky and Mississippi State held to season lows in field-goal percentage and points. The Vols have scored an average of 82.4 points per game this season, and while they averaged just 71.6 in their past three, it didn’t matter because of their effectiveness on defense.
They’ll need to continue that defensive trend.
Auburn – led by Bruce Pearl, who was at Tennessee from 2005 to 2011 and is the only coach besides current Vols leader Rick Barnes to guide the program to a No. 1 ranking – leads the SEC in 3-pointers made per game (11.0) and shoots a league-best 38 percent from long range. The Vols have struggled at times this season with stopping penetration, which has led to some wide-open looks by opponents, but they succeeded in preventing Kentucky and Mississippi State from getting the shots they wanted.
“It has been a long schedule,” Barnes said Thursday. “We knew we were going to hit the gauntlet with who we had to play. If you go back and look, I think we had to play Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State that were all picked in the top five in the preseason. We knew it was going to be tough, and we knew from the beginning that we needed to have a good start.
“It has been a long grind, but the guys realize we have been in tough games. It’s going to be a grind, and you have to embrace it.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.