Tennessee’s game this Saturday afternoon against Illinois will be in front of a packed house in Knoxville, Tennessee.
According to UT Athletics on Friday morning, the game between No. 17 Tennessee and No. 20 Illinois will be in a sold-out Food City Center.
Thompson Boling Arena at Food City Center holds 21,678 spectators. Tennessee also recently announced that three SEC rivalry games will be sold out as well. Those games include Alabama (Jan. 20), Texas A&M (Feb. 24), and Kentucky (Mar. 9).
Tennessee sold out Thompson-Boling Arena five times last season and ended the year with the fifth-highest average attendance across the nation at 18,781.
More from RTI: Tennessee’s Offense At Its Purest Form In Win Over George Mason
The Fighting Illini will present Tennessee with a stout opponent and will provide the Tennessee fanbase with a quality game inside the arena. Illinois is 7-1 on the year with a loss to No. 4 Marquette in mid-November and five straight wins since. Tennessee, meanwhile, is 5-3 on the season after a daunting three-game stretch that saw them lose to then-No. 1 Kansas, then-No. 2 Purdue, and then-No. 17 North Carolina in games away from Knoxville. The Vols bounced back with a strong win over George Mason on Tuesday night in TBA at FCC.
“First of all, really good team we got coming in,” Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark said of Illinois on Friday. “Really good team. I think they’re big, they’re versatile. They have a lot of guys that can play multiple positions. You know, their five man sometimes can look like their point guard. Their point guard can sometimes look like their five man. Their two guard can look like a four man. And those are, in today’s day and age in positionless basketball is, that’s what everybody wants. That’s what we’ve tried to mimic as we’ve continued with our team. So they’re a really good team, man.”
Tipoff between No. 17 Tennessee and No. 20 Illinois will be at 12:00 p.m. ET on CBS this Saturday afternoon in Knoxville.
