NCAA Basketball: Champions Classic, NCAA Tourney bubble lead Sunday Mailbag

5. Who is the one team in the current top 25 that I am not as high on as others? – Erik Mauro (@mauro_erik

This is my favorite question of the week. There is one team that I feel strongly about in the top 25 and I have gotten a lot of flack for it overall. Just to set the record straight, most of the teams who were preseason ranked were very deserving and the rankings were very good. Sure some teams I felt should have been adjusted either higher or lower but there is one team that I didn’t have ranked in my top 25 in my Power Rankings but everyone else seems to.

That team is the Tennessee Volunteers. Let me have it, let’s hear the boos and everything. It’s not that I think Tennessee will be bad and miss the tournament. Quite the contrary, the Volunteers are still a top 50 team, I had them ranked in the top 35, so they still will be no slouch.

Tennessee just needs to show me some more before I will put them in the top 15 of my rankings. I trust Rick Barnes and think he is a fantastic coach, but the Volunteers have some question marks on the roster that I want to see prove it.

Can Yves Pons and John Fulkerson lead this team?  Can Josiah-Jordan James take the next step in his development and play at an all ACC level. The final question that needs to be answered is how good can guard Santiago Vescovi be? He only played half the year and played really well over that half-season but the Volunteers are going to need him to continue to play at a high level.

Tennessee is likely a tournament team but they have some things to prove to me before I would rank them. If they answer those questions then the attitude towards the Volunteers would likely change.