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Vols expecting slew of ‘close and equal’ games as SEC play begins

Tennessee Athletics photo by Kate Luffman / The No. 19 Tennessee Volunteers will begin Southeastern Conference basketball play Saturday afternoon when they face No. 18 Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Tennessee Athletics photo by Kate Luffman / The No. 19 Tennessee Volunteers will begin Southeastern Conference basketball play Saturday afternoon when they face No. 18 Arkansas in Fayetteville. Tennessee Athletics photo by Kate Luffman / The No. 19 Tennessee Volunteers will begin Southeastern Conference basketball play Saturday afternoon when they face No. 18 Arkansas in Fayetteville.

By David Paschall 4 min read

The Tennessee Volunteers closed out the 2025 calendar year by defeating Gardner-Webb and South Carolina State by a combined 93 points.

Now it’s 2026. Now it’s toss-up time.

Tennessee opens the Southeastern Conference portion of its basketball schedule with a top-20 pairing at Arkansas on Saturday (3 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2). The No. 18 Razorbacks and No. 19 Vols are each 10-3 this season and are responsible for the only two losses No. 16 Louisville has sustained.

Arkansas also has a quality win over Texas Tech and losses to Duke, Houston and Michigan State, while Tennessee beat Houston but fell to Illinois, Kansas and Syracuse.

“I don’t know that there is a drastic change right now other than you know that every time you go out on the court, the matchups are really close and equal,” Tennessee 11th-year coach Rick Barnes said Friday in a news conference. “It’s January, and we’ve got to get better like every team, and I’m sure every other coach is saying the same thing.