Tennessee Basketball: Can the 2018-19 Vols team be the best in program history?

Tennessee Basketball enters the 2018-19 season with a weight of expectations never before wrought upon the Volunteers in program history.

Back in the heyday of the Bruce Peal Era in Tennessee, the sky seemed the limit for the Volunteers. Every year, they were competing for the SEC throne and more.

That’s nothing compared to the expectations of the coming season.

Tennessee enters the 2018-19 season in an unprecedented position. Pundits across the nation believe they’ll be one of the best teams in the entire nation, albeit less heralded than Duke, Kansas, and Kentucky.

ESPN boosted them from No. 6 to No. 5 in their latest preseason Top 25 poll.

CBS Sports puts them even higher at No. 4.

Even the fine folks here list them at a lofty No. 10 BEFORE this offseason’s successes – really, lack of losses.

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All of this for a team that held a share of the SEC regular-season title, but crashed out of the NCAA Tournament without even reaching the Sweet Sixteen. A program that has never advanced to the Final Four. Ever.

Therefore, we know what the bar is for an all-time Vols season: a trip to Minneapolis in April as a national semifinalist.

Coach Rick Barnes has been to the Final Four before. While he went to the NCAA Tournament in all but one year during his tenure as the Texas Longhorns’ coach, he only brought his team to the semifinals in 2003. He never won a title.

Still, he has the Vols trending in the right direction. Tennessee was one of the best teams on the defensive end of the court last year, a theme that should be emphasized again in the coming year.

Admiral Schofield was on the verge of turning pro. At the last moment, he quietly decided to return to Knoxville for his senior season. The forward averaged 13.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game last year.

He’s not even their most important returnee. That honor befalls Grant Williams, who won SEC Player of the Year after posting 15.2 points per game during his sophomore season.

The team should return their top six scorers from a year ago.

The recruiting class is underwhelming, but with so many returnees, Tennessee should follow the lead of Villanova and look towards their veterans.

So will this be the best Vols team of all-time? The pieces are certainly in place for Tennessee to win the conference over the reeling Auburn Tigers and young Kentucky Wildcats.

The 2009-10 team that made the Elite Eight in Knoxville came into the season with expectations too. They were ranked in the preseason top 10, but were met with adversity when a New Year’s arrest sidelined a handful of players.

Tyler Smith, who was a preseason member of the All-SEC First team, was one of those players. He was dismissed, but behind Wayne Chism, the team still finished just a basket short of the Final Four.

If Smith was around, maybe the result would’ve been different.

Next: Kentucky's predicted top scorers

This year’s team has the ability to correct those past wrongs.