Who said 13 is unlucky?
Tennessee's athletic programs wound up 13th in the 2021-22 Learfield Directors' Cup standings, marking the university's top finish since 2006-07, when the school earned its best-ever ranking of No. 7. This year's showing ended a 10-year run of Volunteers and Lady Vols teams finishing outside the nation's top 20.
"Our student-athletes and coaches have a lot to be proud about this year, highlighted by five SEC championships," Tennessee athletic director Danny White said through a release. "Across the board, we've shown significant improvement from recent years, but we can't be satisfied - 13th place is not our goal.
"We're setting our sights higher, and I'm very confident we're going to keep rising."
The Learfield rankings come on the heels of Tennessee being recognized last month as the winner of the Southeastern Conference's all-sports award for the first time.
Texas won this year's Directors' Cup, with Stanford, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, Notre Dame, Kentucky and Oklahoma rounding out the top 10. In terms of SEC programs, Tennessee ranked fourth behind Florida, Arkansas and Kentucky.
Tennessee finished ninth among league programs last year.
In other Tennessee news, men's basketball coach Rick Barnes on Friday announced the signing of Tobe (toe-BAY) Awaka (uh-WAH-kuh), a 6-foot-8, 240-pound forward from Hyde Park, New York. His state's Gatorade Player of the Year, Awaka will enroll this month, joining previous high school signees B.J. Edwards, D.J. Jefferson and Julian Phillips.
"Tobe gives us another big, strong presence in the post who plays a very physical brand of basketball," Barnes said. "Tobe is an excellent student and had offers from multiple Ivy League programs."
Awaka was a member of the same New York Lightning AAU program as current Vols sophomore guard Zakai Zeigler.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.