Another men’s basketball game for Tennessee.
Another top-10 showdown.
When the No. 6 Volunteers face No. 7 Texas A&M in College Station on Saturday (noon Eastern on ESPN), It will mark Tennessee’s fourth matchup this season involving top-10 teams. Both of Tennessee’s games against Florida fell into that category, as did the trip to No. 1 Auburn on Jan. 25.
The Vols, who have been ranked in the top 10 since Thanksgiving, are entering their 11th pairing of ranked teams overall, with Buzz Williams and his Aggies representing the 10th such Southeastern Conference program.
“They play extremely hard, they’re well-coached and they know their system,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Friday in a news conference. “They know how they want to play. Buzz’s teams always compete at the highest level, and you just look at their rebounding and how they drive the ball hard.
“They’re going to pick the mismatches they want to go after, and they’re going to give great effort from start to finish.”
The Aggies average a whopping 40.9 rebounds a game and lead the SEC with a rebound margin of plus-9.2 per contest. When asked why they are so strong in that department, Barnes quickly replied that it’s “because they’re big and they recruit guys who can do it.”
Tennessee (21-5, 8-5 SEC) is a projected NCAA tournament No. 2 seed and Texas A&M (20-6, 9-4) a projected No. 3 seed, according to ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi, and each is in the running for a double bye into next month’s league tournament quarterfinals. Barnes was asked if next month’s inaugural 16-team SEC tournament in Nashville was already being discussed.
“People talk about that, obviously, and we show them the standings every week and where we are,” Barnes said. “It is what it is, and I’ve seen teams win a conference tournament in a lot of different ways. The bottom line is that it’s about today.
“What you’ve done with your body of work is where you get seeded, but I don’t think that is foremost on our minds right now.”
The Vols have not won in College Station since 2021, falling 68-63 in 2023 and 85-69 last season. They are coming off their lone midweek break of their conference schedule, and Barnes said the biggest aspect to the extra time off was getting players healthy.
In addition to the rebounding importance of Tennessee’s latest top-10 encounter, there is also the intriguing guard matchup of Aggies senior Wade Taylor IV and Vols senior Zakai Zeigler, who have combined for 259 career games and 176 career starts. While Taylor has averaged 14.4 points throughout his career to Zeigler’s 11.0, Zeigler has averaged 5.2 assists per game to Taylor’s 3.5.
“These are two guys who have impacted their programs in an enormous way,” Barnes said.
Grinding it out
Tennessee freshman guard Bishop Boswell played 11 minutes during the 64-44 surprise rout of Florida at the beginning of the month, when both Zeigler and Igor Milicic Jr. were out, but the 6-foot-4, 203-pounder from Charlotte, North Carolina, has played only 10 combined minutes in three games since. Boswell didn’t even play in last week’s 75-64 loss at Kentucky, but he said that older teammates are helping him through these challenges.
“We have those conversations all the time,” Boswell said Friday. “They keep me uplifted and stuff like that.”
Odds and ends
Tennessee holds a 12-8 series advantage over the Aggies, which includes a 4-4 split in College Station. … Zeigler has 659 career assists and needs six to move past Alabama’s Terry Coner (1983-87) and into fourth in SEC history. … Barnes has a 32-11 career coaching mark against the Aggies.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.