Brief Tennessee Men’s Basketball Recap
Bryce Harvey
This 2018-19 Tennessee basketball team will go down as one of the, if not the, best basketball team to ever come through the university. The seniors on this team started their careers at Tennessee with a horrendous 15-19 record. That horrible performance was followed up by a mediocre 16-16 record and had a lot of Tennessee fans beginning to fear Rick Barnes wasn’t the coach he was at Texas.
At the beginning of the 2017-18 season, Tennessee was picked to finish 12th in the SEC and many analyst believed Rick Barnes would be fired at the end of the season. However, nobody could’ve predicted what was about to come out of Knoxville. The Volunteers took the nation by storm. Tennessee went 26-9 overall and clinched a share of the SEC regular season title. Rick Barnes was named coach of the year and Grant Williams was named SEC player of the year. The Vols also featured 2 All-SEC players in Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield. Then came the 2018-19 campaign. Tennessee started the season ranked number 6 in the AP top 25 poll. Grant Williams was poised for another SEC player of the year and many picked the Vols to win the SEC outright.
This team did not disappoint. The Volunteers went 31-6 and tied for second in the SEC due to some questionable officiating down in Baton Rouge. Tennessee was ranked number 1 in the AP poll for 4 straight weeks and stayed inside the top 5 for the majority of the season. At one point in the season, the Vols were 24-0 and went 18-0 at home. Grant Williams repeated as SEC player of the year and Rick Barnes earned coach of the year again. Grant was also a 1st team All-American and Admiral was a 1st team All-SEC. On top of his other awards, Grant is also one of four finalist for the Naismith Men’s College Basketball Player of the Year. Despite all of these wonderful awards and numerous other accolades Tennessee players are finalists for, the greatest thing this team shared with us was their faith and the love they share for one another. This team represented the University of Tennessee to the best of their abilities and Tennessee is forever indebted to the players.