It began in East Lansing to two days before Halloween. It ended 87 miles to the east in Detroit on Easter.
In between, Tennessee basketball won 27 games, a championship and reached NCAA Tournament heights that only one other team in program history reached.
“It’s been the best year of my life by far,” super senior Josiah-Jordan James said on Sunday after his career came to an end one-game short of the Final Four. “I say that because of the group that we had. This was by far my favorite season of basketball. These guys in this locker room, they give me so much joy. They give me so much life on a daily basis. That’s why it hurts so much. Just knowing that we don’t have practice tomorrow. Our season is over with.”
The 2023-24 Vols won the program’s first SEC Regular-Season Championship since 2018 and the first outright SEC Regular-Season Championship since 2008.
Tennessee delivered away from home, going into hostile environments and silencing the likes of Wisconsin, Kentucky, Alabama and South Carolina. Those final two games proving to be SEC Championship games.
The Vols dramatically improved on the offensive end as they welcomed the dynamic Dalton Knecht and Zakai Zeigler returned from a torn ACL even better. They improved over the course of the season, part of why Rick Barnes said he wanted every coach to get to coach a group like his.
“The hardest thing is when it ends and we have a special year,” Barnes said. “That’s the tough part of where we are right now. Just a blessing of having a chance to be with a group of guys. … I can tell you this, when they look back on it, right now it’s very difficult, but they’ll look back and know they went after it and have no regrets.”
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Nor should they. Tennessee’s had underwhelming NCAA Tournament losses in the past. That wasn’t the case on Sunday. The Vols lost by six points to a slightly better team in what was essentially a road game. They didn’t play their best game but they didn’t shy away from the moment either.
“Every player on this team gave their all to the team and I think that’s the most you could ask for,” junior guard Jahmai Mashack said postgame. “The way we went down, we went down fighting for sure. We went down doing whatever we could. Despite what the result was, you can say what you want about us, we did everything we could to win. Everybody in here did everything they could to win.”
There’s a NCAA Tournament lesson there. The bracket didn’t break Tennessee’s way. They played the highest possible seed in every round of the tournament, playing perhaps their best game of the season in a narrow Sweet 16 win over Creighton.
Tennessee’s reward in its second ever Elite Eight appearance while being the third highest seed remaining? One of the two best teams in the country. Sometimes the breaks go your way in the NCAA Tournament field. Sometimes they don’t. Just ask Alabama, who took advantage of all the breaks this season after two better teams in the previous three seasons bowed out in the Sweet 16.
But neither the Elite Eight loss nor Alabama’s run diminish what Tennessee achieved this season. A veteran laden team that had been through battles and adversity in previous years won a conference championship and made a deep run in March. They’re the best team in Tennessee history, with the outgoing seniors leaving the program better than they found it.
“It meant everything. It’s impossible to put into words how much these people and this place mean to me,” James said. “I love everybody that I encountered at the University of Tennessee. I’m just so grateful.”
