The Most Important Week Of The Regular Season Is Here For Tennessee Basketball

Zakai Zeigler (5) celebrates a made shot during a game against MTSU at Food City Center. Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. Cole Moore/RTI

Tennessee returns from Auburn looking to bounce back from a heartbreaking loss against the nation’s No. 1 team. The Vols enter a three-game home stand with a 4-3 record in conference play and an opportunity to stack up wins.

But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. This week, Tennessee hosts No. 12 Kentucky in a Super Tuesday rivalry showdown before hosting No. 5 Florida on Saturday afternoon.

The combination of Tennessee’s shaky start to SEC play, the need to protect home court and the two strong opponents coming to Knoxville makes this the most important week of the Vols’ regular season.

Defending home court is always important in college basketball but it is even more important this season in the SEC where nearly every game on the road is a tough task with very few easy wins.

“Honestly, every home game you get is huge in this league,” Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark said on Monday. “It’s hard to win road games in general, but then you try to win road games in the SEC and it’s just hard. It’s tough. We got great environments in this league. We got great coaches in this league. You have guys that take a lot of pride in playing at home in this league and some of these home courts are different than they’ve been in the past due to whether it’s new coaches or a new spark in the program, whatever the case may be.

“So it’s hard to win in on the road. So when you have home games, you got to take care of your home floor, you got to handle it. You got to use the energy that you get from your crowds to your advantage.”

If Tennessee can knock off both Kentucky and Florida this week then there’s a real path to the Vols running the table at home this season. After this week, Tennessee has home matchups against Missouri, Vanderbilt, Alabama and South Carolina.

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Alabama is a top five team while Missouri and Vanderbilt are both top 25 teams. But Tennessee has had Alabama’s number in recent years and the Vols will likely be double-digit favorites against both the Tigers and Commodores.

Tennessee going undefeated at home would go a long way when it comes to earning a double-bye in the SEC Tournament and when it comes to earning a top-two seed in the NCAA Tournament. Getting to 13 conference wins would guarantee both of those things and the Vols almost have to go undefeated at home to make that happen.

But a 12-6 SEC record also gives Tennessee a strong chance to do that given the difficulty of the league. The Vols have road games at LSU and Oklahoma that they should win, not that it’ll be easy, as well as very challenging tasks at Kentucky, Texas A&M and Ole Miss.

Needing just two more wins on the road to get to 12 SEC wins is a very doable task and shows the importance of Tennessee winning both home games this week.

Kentucky is down starting point guard Lamont Butler and could also be down forward Andrew Carr. The Vols are 9.5-point favorites over Kentucky according to FanDuel Sportsbook. The line for the Tennessee-Florida game has yet to be released.

Tipoff between Tennessee and Kentucky is at 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday night. Karl Ravech, Jimmy Dykes and Molly McGrath are on the call for ESPN.

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