Besat The Tennessee men’s basketball team fell short of the SEC Tournament championship Sunday.
But more coveted prizes — the program’s first Final Four berth and NCAA tournament titles — are very much still within reach.
The Volunteers on Sunday were one of a record 14 Southeastern Conference teams earning Big Dance bids and drew the second seed in the Midwest Region. They currently have the fifth-best consensus odds at the leading online sportsbooks to win the national championship on April 7 in San Antonio.
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The Madness is officially upon us as the 68-team men’s bracket was revealed Sunday.
Tennessee begins play at 6:50 p.m. ET, Thursday with a first-round matchup against Wofford at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky. TNT has the telecast.
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Best March Madness betting sites: Top 10 championship favorites as of Sunday
The brackets four top seeds are Auburn (No. 1 overall, South Region), Duke (East) Houston (Midwest) and Florida (West).
Tennessee joins Michigan State (South), Alabama (East) and St. John’s (West) on the 2-seed line.
Those seeds correspond almost line for line with the top-10 favorites to win the overall tourney title, ranked by their top-sportsbook consensus odds as of Sunday night:
- Duke +350
- Florida +425
- Auburn +435
- Houston +690
- Tennessee +1425
- Alabama +1625
- Michigan State +2275
- St. John’s +2300
- Texas Tech +2825
- Iowa State +3075
Best March Madness betting sites: Tennessee has +370 odds to win Midwest Region
The Vols (27-7) finished fourth in the SEC regular season and fell to Florida, 86-77, on Sunday in the conference tourney title game.
But coach Rick Barnes’ team spent five weeks atop the Associated Press poll this season and drew a No. 2 NCAA tourney seed for the second straight season.
Tennessee lost to eventual national runner-up Purdue, 72-66, in last season’s Midwest Region final in Detroit, denying the Vols their first trip to Final Four.
Can UT break through in its fifth straight Big Dance appearance — it has advanced a round further in each of the last four seasons — and 27th overall?
As of Sunday night at FanDuel Sportsbook, the Volunteers had +370 odds to win the Midwest, trailing only top-seeded Houston (+140). Interestingly eighth-seeded Gonzaga was third at +850 while No. 3 Kentucky and No. 6 Illinois were both at +900 as the region’s only teams with better than 12-1 Final Four odds.
Tennessee, as of Sunday, was ranked fifth in both guru Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency ratings and the NCAA NET rankings while sitting sixth in the selection committee-utilized Bart Torvik ratings, thanks largely to the nation’s third-most efficient defense (91.1), adjusted by opponent.
Tennessee is a consensus 19-point first round favorite against Wofford, the surprise Southern Conference tourney champ, on Thursday.
And provided the Vols avoid a massive first-round upset — 2-seeds are 145-11 vs. 15-seeds in the first round since the tourney expanded to 64 teams in 1985 — their highest-possible seed path in the Midwest would include No. 7 UCLA, No. 3 Kentucky and the top-seeded Cougars.
Stealing a glance at a potential (and very familiar) Sweet 16 matchup in Indianapolis, Tennessee was swept by rival Kentucky in home-and-home contests during the regular season, falling 78-73 in Knoxville on Jan. 28 and 75-64 in Lexington on Feb. 11.
