If Tennessee can handle a few days in warm weather and then a few days in cold weather, it will be a successful NCAA men's basketball tournament.
The Volunteers (23-10) were selected Sunday as the fourth seed in the East Region and will open Thursday night (9:40 on CBS) against 13th-seeded Louisiana at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. The Ragin' Cajuns (26-7) were automatic qualifiers to the 68-team field as a result of winning the Sun Belt Conference tournament.
A win by Tennessee would result in a Saturday showdown against Thursday's winner between fifth-seeded Duke (26-8), the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament champion, and 12th-seeded Oral Roberts (30-4), which cruised to regular-season and tournament titles in the Summit League.
Should both Tennessee and Duke advance, the Vols and Blue Devils would play for a trip to the Sweet 16 at New York City's famed Madison Square Garden.
Tennessee was a trendy Final Four pick last year after roaring through the Southeastern Conference tournament and entering NCAA play with 12 victories in its previous 13 games. That was not the case Sunday night, when both CBS and ESPN analysts gave the Vols little chance to win multiple games.
"I like Duke's draw," ESPN analyst and former Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg said, with ESPN studio host Rece Davis adding, "Tennessee is the four seed and has Louisiana, but the Volunteers are a little bit of a different team without Zakai Zeigler."
The Vols have lost two of their past three games — falling 79-70 at Auburn on March 4 and 79-71 to Missouri in Friday's SEC quarterfinals in Nashville — since their sophomore point guard sustained his season-ending ACL injury. Tennessee led both Auburn and Mizzou with less than six minutes remaining before fading down the stretch.
"We've played the entire year with Zakai Zeigler, and that's when he was in control of the game," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said after Friday's loss. "We've got to get better with our floor balance at the end."
Barnes is scheduled to meet with the media Monday to discuss the program's fifth consecutive bid to a staged NCAA tournament, with the 2020 event having been canceled due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. The Vols are 4-4 in NCAA tournament games under Barnes, reaching the Sweet 16 in 2019, and they are 23-25 all-time.
Tennessee's deepest NCAA tournament run occurred as a Midwest Region sixth seed under Bruce Pearl in 2010, when the Vols defeated 11th-seeded San Diego State, 14th-seeded Ohio and second-seeded Ohio State before losing to fifth-seeded Michigan State in the Elite Eight.
The Vols opened Sunday night as 14-point favorites over the Ragin' Cajuns, who finished 14-0 at home and are 5-0 in neutral-site games. The only ranked team Louisiana faced was Texas on Dec. 21, losing to the No. 7 Longhorns in Austin 100-72.
"Jordan Brown was a McDonald's All-American who went to Nevada under Eric Musselman and then transferred to Arizona before going to Louisiana to play for Bob Marlin," ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said. "I don't think he's enough to beat Tennessee, even without Zakai Zeigler."
The 6-foot-11, 225-pound Brown averages 19.4 points per game and is shooting 57.0% from the floor.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.