NCAA Basketball: Reevaluating preseason top 25 power rankings of 2022-23 season

11. Tennessee (25-10, 4-seed, Sweet Sixteen)

Since Rick Barnes was hired in 2015, this Tennessee program has been in an improved shape but hasn’t really had a really great season, outside of a Sweet Sixteen run back in 2019 that ended in a tough loss to Purdue. There’s been no issue with the Volunteers’ performance in the regular season in recent years, but Barnes needed another significant postseason run after some upsets in recent years, especially with the talent on this year’s team.

A loss to Colorado in the season’s first weekend was a head-scratcher, but Tennessee bounced back by winning the Battle 4 Atlantis, which included a big win over Kansas in the title game. They weren’t perfect by any means this season, but sat 18-3 after a win against Texas and sat in great shape in most of the metrics. Tennessee boasted one of the nation’s best defenses but lost on a pair of buzzer-beaters in early February before losing point guard Zakai Zeigler for the rest of the season. After falling in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals, there were certainly many ready to write off the Volunteers again.

Clearly, this was not the case for Tennessee, even though they struggled with 13-seed Louisiana in the first round. After getting that hard-earned win, the Volunteers took care of business and got a 13-point win over Duke to get back to the Sweet Sixteen. Santiago Vescovi and Olivier Nkamhoua are both playing really well this season and the Volunteers are covering for the loss of their point guard. They’ll certainly be favorites against Florida Atlantic later this week and could be headed to Barnes’ deepest postseason run in Knoxville.