NCAA basketball tournament experience comes in varying degrees for the Tennessee Volunteers.
For Vols head coach Rick Barnes, this is his 30th trip. It’s the second such journey for Tennessee’s starting guard tandem of Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Bishop Boswell, with Gillespie having reached last season’s Sweet 16 with the Maryland Terrapins.
It’s obviously the first trek for the five scholarship freshman Vols, with that group headed by five-star forward Nate Ament.
“I think it’s just the level of urgency you’ve got to have,” Boswell said Sunday night after Tennessee was selected to an eighth consecutive 68-team field. “The energy is just totally different from a regular-season basketball game. This is March. This is something everyone dreams of.
“Everyone is on edge, so you’ve got to be on edge.”
Tennessee (22-11) was selected as the Midwest Regional’s sixth seed and will open NCAA play Friday afternoon at approximately 4:25 in Philadelphia. The Vols will play the winner of Wednesday night’s First Four matchup between Miami University (31-1) and SMU (20-13), with that pairing taking place at 9:15 in Dayton, Ohio.
Should the Vols win Friday, they would play again Sunday against Friday’s winner between third-seeded Virginia (29-5) and 14th-seeded Wright State (23-11). Tennessee has won at least two games in each of the past three NCAA tournaments, setting a program record in the process, but the Vols were a regional fourth seed in 2023 and were seeded second each of the last two years.
In his first 29 NCAA tourney experiences, Barnes has only advanced to the Final Four once — with Texas in 2003 — but he does have 10 trips to the Sweet 16 and five to the Elite Eight, including each of the past two years with the Vols.
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” Barnes said. “Matchups are important in the tournament. We could break down every game — in our last game we had turnovers and fouls at the wrong time. That can hurt you, and now it can send you home.”
Barnes has a 33-29 record in NCAA tournament play, a mark that was 25-26 until his 8-3 run over the past three events. His first five NCAA losses with Tennessee were against lower-seeded teams, most notably 11th-seeded Loyola of Chicago in 2018, 12th-seeded Oregon State in 2021 and ninth-seeded Florida Atlantic in 2023, but the past two setbacks were to top-seeded Purdue and Houston.
Tennessee’s all-time record in NCAA play nearly mirrors that of Barnes, with the Vols having gone 31-28.
“You would like to think that mentally you realize the value of every possession and what it’s going to take to win,” Barnes said. “It’s hard to win this time of year. If you’re playing this time of year, that means you’re a good basketball team, and we’ve seen now that a 16 seed can beat a 1 seed. You take nothing for granted, and you’ve got to have great focus.
“You also can’t make it bigger than what it is. It’s another game, and everybody knows what you’re playing for.”
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Tennessee’s 22 victories entering this NCAA tournament represent the fewest since the 2020-21 season, when the Vols only played seven nonconference games due to COVID-related cancellations.
The Vols have also lost four of their last six contests, their worst six-game stretch entering NCAA play under Barnes.
“I’ve seen us work from the summer until now, and I’ve seen how good we can be,” Boswell said. “I know how talented we are.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.