KNOXVILLE - Out on the Thompson-Boling Arena court, the one filled with dancing Tennessee Volunteers and a certain former Tennessee football coach turned athletic director who was campaigning for basketball coach Rick Barnes to be "national coach of the year," the school's first Southeastern Conference regular-season (co)-championship since 2008 couldn't have been sweeter Saturday evening.
It wasn't so much that the Big Orange came from behind very late to knock off Georgia 66-61. A lot of teams have come back late this season against the Bulldogs, who have lost second-half leads of eight or more points on at least four occasions in league play, as well as seeing a four-point lead become a loss in the final 2:28 of Wednesday's home game against Texas A&M.
But it was very much a series of earlier events that helped produce this win, as well as so many of the Vols' 22 earlier victories this season against a total of seven losses.
"Not bad for a team that was picked to finish 13th in the preseason," said Barnes, referring to the, gulp, media poll from late October.
But it was something else he said that said it all: "We started working for this the week after last year's SEC tournament. Hardest spring I can remember. They spent spring time on the track running. Things I hadn't done in 15 years. You don't want to be on spring break as a basketball player. You want to be on the court, in the tournament. So I told them we were going to work like we were in the tournament. And we did. All conditioning."
Along with a chemistry-building summer exhibition trip to Europe, it all worked. Even before the season started, and the media picked them next to last, the Vols were a far different team than the ones that had ended Barnes' first two seasons by losing in the SEC tourney.
Recalling that preseason SEC media event, Admiral Schofield - whose jumper with 17 seconds to play put UT up by three points - said, "It was very hard to go to media days with Grant (Williams) and hear we were going to finish 13th."
Then he smiled and added, "It's always good to have the last laugh."
They all contributed to this last laugh, just as they'd done all season, when no fewer than five players have led the Vols in scoring for at least one game and seven have led at least once in rebounding.
As with most games, Williams came up big with 22 points before fouling out with 3:33 to go. But by then his teammates all had his back, as the sophomore post player was only too happy to recall afterward.
"Kyle's (Alexander) steal, Lamonte's (Turner) 3, Admiral's turnaround, I watched them all," he said of the Tennessee Trifecta that locked down this very big win. "Those are my brothers and this means everything."
It actually started with the last of Turner's three titanic treys, all buried with supreme calm and confidence in the final half. His final one swished with 2:31, cutting a four-point Georgia lead to at 61-60. After two Jordan Bowden free throws handed the Vols the lead at 62-61, with 1:01 to play, the Bulldogs wanted their potential SEC player of the year - Yante Maten - to return the visitors the lead.
Only Alexander was having none of it. He stole the entry pass, which led Schofield to hit his turnaround 21 seconds later, the shot that put the Vols up 64-61.
"The biggest thing was to assert myself as the Alpha dog," Schofield, who led Tennessee with 23 points, said of that game-clincher. "I hit the shot, but we all put in the work."
Everyone put in the work this night, including the crowd. Having covered UT athletics for more than 30 years, I've heard the Big Orange Nation louder only once than it roared when a Turner 3-pointer put the Vols up 55-53 after they trailed by nine in the second half.
That was the 1998 football win over Arkansas on UT's path to the national championship. The ground beneath Neyland Stadium shook that night. The Boling Alley court shook Saturday night.
"I often say I don't hear (the crowd)," Barnes said afterward. "I heard it."
He also heard the crowd chant, "It's great to be a Tennessee Vol," because he asked to hear it. And then he heard yet another rendition of "Rocky Top." And if there's any justice, he'll soon hear he's no worse than SEC co-coach of the year with the former Tennessee coach with whom he'll also be co-champion - Auburn's Bruce Pearl.
A single fact to show the brilliance and determination with which Barnes coaches: Of the five SEC teams the Vols would play twice this season - Georgia, Kentucky, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Vanderbilt - Barnes told his staff that UT needed to go 8-2 in those games. It went 9-1.
"This is the kind of game we've played all year," Barnes said. "We've got to grind it out. That's what we do. That's who we are."
They're now SEC regular-season co-champs, which isn't bad at all for a team once picked to finish 13th in a 14-team league.
But that's not how they want the Big Orange Nation to remember them.
"We hadn't won the regular season since 2008," Schofield said. "We haven't won the SEC tournament since 1979. So we still have work to do."
But unlike last October, no one will be the least bit surprised if they have the last laugh regarding that championship, too, come next Sunday in St. Louis.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com