For a 3rd consecutive year, Tennessee appears to be under-seeded in the NCAA basketball tournament.
The Vols are a 6-seed in the tournament, which begins Thursday and will face a tough No. 11 San Diego State team in the opening round.
Despite their shortcomings, this Tennessee team had an obvious 4-seed resume: They’re ranked in the Top 15 in the polls and in the Sagarin Rankings and lost just eight games this year while beating two of the teams that earned No. 1 seeds today (Kansas and Kentucky).
I’m already on record as saying I think this UT team will under-achieve in the tournament, so perhaps there isn’t much to complain about. Actually, on its face, the road to the Elite 8 isn’t a terribly difficult one for Tennessee. If the Vols can get by SDSU in the opening round, they would likely face No. 3 Georgetown in the second round. No. 2 Ohio State would await the winner of that one in the round of 16.
twice guessing: Well, if you can watch this video without puddling up you certainly are cold hearted. I am truly...
BenG.: I don't think I could afford their salaries!!
Mom: Sounds like something out of one of the CSI shows.
Brandon: Bobby Johnson left...don't see it happening now....I can live with 6-6 with the talent and injuries...
about 5 months ago
Tennessee is one of those team I always hope my team gets to play come tournament time. They remind me of the Billy Tubbs Oklahoma teams in the 80’s . . . great during the season, BUT find a way to get beat when it counts.
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about 5 months ago
If they beat SDSU, they’re dead in the water against Georgetown….Georgetown’s bigs are too good and too big, that’s UT’s problem, Chism is a PF playing center and when they play teams with alot of size in the post they get beat that’s what happened against UK and it will happen against Georgetown, Chism is too small to be playing some of the bigger post guys and when he gets in foul trouble we r done…
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about 5 months ago
I agree their overall resume shows they deserve at least a No. 5 seed but that game Saturday against Kentucky left a bad taste in the committee’s mouth. A better showing in that game…let alone a win…would’ve given them that fifth seed.
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about 5 months ago
YES. We were shafted. No other way around it.
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about 5 months ago
@Brandon: UT matches up quite well with Georgetown. See last season’s meeting between the two teams, when UT throttled them pretty good. Georgetown is a better team this year, but so is Tennessee.
The bottom line is this: If Tennessee were to play up to its potential, the road to the Elite Eight is probably easier in this bracket than it would be as a 6 seed in any of the other three brackets. However, I fully expect them to fall to either SDSU or Georgetown simply because they don’t play up to their ability.
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about 5 months ago
Great article, hey I stumbled on to this story while searching for mp3 downloads. Thanks for sharing I’ll email my friends about this too.
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about 5 months ago
Of course they were shafted AGAIN! The SEC tourney seeding is outdated, as the VOLS should not have been playing on Thursday. I would have liked to have seen a Sunday matchup with ky, with both teams having equal rest. How can Miss. State or Ole Miss get a bye, without at least defeating one of the top four teams from the SEC East during the regular season. Seeding 1-12 has to happen! At least the ladies get it right!
Back to the topic at hand. How can the committee justify a 6 seed for TN? Bruce always has a quality schedule, and UT is the only team in this tourney to defeat the current #1 & #2 teams in the land. A top 15 team with a quality schedule AND quality wins should never fall to a 6 seed. If North Carolina or Connecticut had the same resume as TN, no doubt they would have a top 3 or 4 seed. I know the ky loss was bad, but it was a game that shouldn’t have been played until Sunday anyway. If TN had played one less game than ky, it would have swung the outcome in a different direction completely.
If you watched the interview with Mike Slive(SEC commissioner and former chairman of the selection committee) between Friday night’s UF/Miss St. and the start of the UGA/Vandy game, you would have heard him say that traditionally the committe doesn’t put much weight on conference tourney’s. Really? Apparently, the current committee does. With a win over uk, or at least a closer score, TN gets a 3 seed. However, with a bad loss, they fall all the way to a 6 seed. On the other hand, Syracuse fails to advance past the quarterfinals of their conference tournament, yet still receive a 1 seed? Something stinks!!
I’m sure it won’t matter since traditionally TN doesn’t fair well in tourney’s, but a little more respect would have been nice. I guess this gives Bruce a little extra motivation! The SDSU game should be fun to watch, and Georgetown may be big, but we’re deeper. GO VOLS!!
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about 5 months ago
Syracuse might have failed to advance in their tourney BUT…Syracuse is a far more talented team than UT, they were ranked higher all year, and played in a tougher conference…to even compare the two teams circumstances is ridiculous! UT is where they should be, and inconsistent team that played up and down and didn’t take full advantage of it’s opportunities during the season. Based on what i saw this season, 6 is about right..We may be deeper but Gtown’s bigs will take advantage of our undersized bigs and if we make it that far, we won’t make it further.
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about 5 months ago
Comparing Tennessee and Syracuse’s circumstances isn’t ridiculous at all. It’s a valid point. By giving Syracuse a 1-seed, we can assume that the committee didn’t take their conference tourney performance into consideration. Yet, the ONLY justification for Tennessee having a 6-seed is because they lost by 29 points in the conference semifinals. It’s an obvious double standard. Take away the loss to Kentucky and what do you have? A team ranked in the top 15 with an RPI in the top 20 who beat the #1 and #2 teams in the country. I would bet you that a 6-seed with that resume is unprecedented. Can you find anytime it’s ever happened before?
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about 5 months ago
It is ridiculous because the committee based the seedings on the WHOLE body of work from start of the year to the finish, it took considerations from the conference tourney and the regular season. Syracuse lost in the first round of their tourney, but their conference was the toughest conference in the country this year so that was also put into consideration. Syracuse lost 4 games this season, UT 8…Syracuse’s losses were to conference teams Pitt-nationally ranked Geortown-nationally ranked, Louisville-ranked earlier in the year but fell out later…all losses were to good teams who are now in the tourney (and again tougher conference)..UT-had quality wins and losses to quality teams, but had 2 glaring losses in games they should have won Georgia and Florida, and struggled in other instances against teams they should have not had problems with during the season and during the tourney. That is the difference look at the body of work in a whole…you act as if their seeding should be based entirely on upsetting kansas and kentucky which goes against what you were arguing about in the first place(basing everything on one bad game is the same as basing on two good games)…maybe UT should have been a little higher seed but probably not above a 5 considering the other 4 seeds the only one i would think about would be Wisconsin.
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about 5 months ago
You aren’t getting the point that Stu was making. This isn’t a comparison of Syracuse’s accomplishments and Tennessee’s accomplishments. It’s a comparison of how the two teams performed in their conference tournaments and the way they were seeded as a result.
No one said that Tennessee should’ve been a 4-seed based entirely on the Kansas and Kentucky wins. The argument is that their overall credentials–the whole body of work, as you call it–clearly indicates a 4-seed, or a 5-seed at absolute worst.
And no one’s opinion is ridiculous.
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about 5 months ago
I truly believe that one could make the point that if UT had lost to Ole Miss on Friday instead of to UK on Saturday, that we probably would have been a 4 or 5 seed.
THAT is just wrong.
The NCAA needs to get basketball people involved in this process as opposed to a bunch of scholars that don’t know squat about ‘basketball’.
However, to say that UT didn’t take advantage of their opportunities is comical. Really, the only game we should have played better AND won, was the USC game. Other than that and perhaps the game at Georgia, we had a great season. There is no taking back the fact that we beat beat both Kansas and UK at home.
Yep. We were screwed. We are getting used to it.
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about 5 months ago
Ben, you are not listening….you can’t make the seedings based entirely on the conference tournament and that’s what i was trying to say…so your saying the rest of the season is moot and a team should be seeded based on his conference tourney? That makes a lot of sense…you make the seedings based on the whole season, the confernce tourney and your strength of schedule…and the fact is the big east was tougher than the SEC that and the tourney loss and the fact that UT lost 3 games to inferior teams during the year cost them a higher seed…
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