While Rob Dauster has “no doubts” that Tennessee is and will be a good team, the national college basketball analyst is pumping the brakes a bit on Rick Barnes’ squad being in the absolute upper echelon of the college basketball landscape at this point in the season.
Dauster broke down his thoughts on Tennessee’s loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday night during the late-night episode of The Field of 68 podcast alongside John Fanta and Jeff Goodman, highlighting how the Vols were able to stay competitive in Nashville despite ultimately losing to the Commodores by one point. The concerns from late have Dauster repositioning Tennessee in his own power rankings, though.
“I think Tennessee is closer to, like, a Top 10 to 12 team than the Top 5-ish kind of a team that we’ve been ranking them all year,” Dauster said on Saturday night’s show. “But, to me, this performance said way, way, way, way, way more about Vanderbilt than it did about Tennessee.”
Dauster went on to break down the Vanderbilt game from the Vols’ perspective.
“The Vols dealt with some foul trouble early in the first half, right, they face guarded (Chaz) Lanier, which, I mean, Zakai Zeigler was able to get in the paint and the reason why (Felix) Okpara got like 75 lobs at the rim was because Rick Barnes just put Chaz Lanier in the deep corner so every time Zakai got in there, there was no tagger so it was a dunk show,” Dauster said.
More from RTI: Where Tennessee Basketball Lands In The AP Poll Following Loss At Vanderbilt
Tennessee was down 16 points in the second half but clawed back to make it a one-possession game in the final minute. After Chaz Lanier was sent to the free-throw line with Tennessee down two and just 2.8 seconds left on the clock, the senior guard only made one of two attempts as the Vols fell just short of tying the game. This was Tennessee’s second loss in four games after losing to No. 8 Florida by 30 in Gainesville on Jan. 7.
“I have no doubts that Tennessee is going to be good,” Dauster said to close his thought. “The road is going to be hard in the SEC. This was a really, really impressive win for Vanderbilt and one that they need to hopefully kickstart them as they go through the gates of hell over the course of the next month in their schedule.”
As Dauster mentioned, the road ahead is going to be a challenging and potentially season-defining stretch for Rick Barnes’ team. Six of Tennessee’s next seven opponents including five-straight teams are ranked in the Top 25 as the SEC continues to produce some of the best basketball in the country in January.
The Vols will host No. 14 Mississippi State on Tuesday night in Knoxville before heading out of state to take on No. 1 Auburn in their building on Saturday night.
Check out the full clip from The Field of 68 podcast below:
