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The Tennessee Volunteers are headed back to the Sweet Sixteen for the fourth straight season under men’s head basketball coach Rick Barnes. The 6-seeded Vols beat the 3-seeded Virginia Cavaliers 79-72 to advance to the next round of the men’s NCAA Tournament, where they will face off against the No. 2 seed Iowa State.

Let’s dive into a few of my takeaways from Sunday night’s instant classic in Philadelphia, where the Vols were able to stay dancing.

The Free Throws Ended Up Being Huge

For a lot of this game, I wondered if Tennessee would run into a math problem against Ryan Odom’s Cavaliers. The Cavs were taking, and, well, making lots of threes early in this ball game. Virginia made five threes on eight attempts within the first eight minutes, which did not seem like a recipe for a Volunteer victory on Sunday night.

Tennessee weathered the hot shooting from deep by Virginia, though, and pounded the latter inside. There was a point late in the first half where Tennessee had outscored Virginia 14-4 in the paint, but, again, I wondered if this would ultimately spell doom for the Vols with Virginia’s three-point shooting and the Vols continuing to play with two bigs, even after JP Estrella picked up two early fouls in the first half.

However, the Vols and Cavs finished with 28 and 26 points in the paint, respectively. The Vols and the Cavs finished close in three-pointers made, with 8 and 12, respectively. The disparity in points came at the free-throw line, as Tennessee’s top two scorers, Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Nate Ament, combined to go 13-of-14 at the charity stripe. Ultimately, the Vols went 19-25 at the free-throw line, and it proved to be the key scoring difference for Tennessee, stealing one over the higher-seeded Cavaliers.

Bishop Boswell Had Himself A Night

The sophomore guard had himself a game, didn’t he? As worried as I was about Tennessee’s math problem against Virginia early, Boswell played a significant role in the Vols’ winning this game and advancing to the Sweet Sixteen. Boswell hit three first-half threes and another big one in the second half, as he went 4-of-10 from deep overall on the night.

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Tennessee needed every one of those first-half threes from Boswell. There was one possession where Boswell even passed up an open three-pointer to drive and kick to Gillespie for an even better look from deep, which the latter drained. Boswell made so many different winning plays for Tennessee in this game and even added nine assists for good measure.

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Boswell can shoot, and the Vols need him to remember that he can shoot against the Cyclones in the Sweet Sixteen. Spacing can be tight for the Vols in the halfcourt, so Boswell must fire those open threes when he gets those kinds of looks because he can make them, and Tennessee needs him to take them. Boswell doesn’t need to fire any midrange shots, and he doesn’t really need to try to finish at the rim.

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He has to continue a similar shot diet to the one he had Sunday night moving forward. That doesn’t mean he needs to take ten-plus threes a night – it all depends on the flow of the game and what opposing defenses are showing him. Still, the Vols need more three-point shooting like that from Boswell, and they’ll always need his ability to drive and find Ament or Gillespie open for three around the perimeter.

Tennessee Turnovers Didn’t Cost Them

I think every Vol fan was a tad nervous as the second-half turnovers really started to mount late, although some of them were the result of some questionable non-foul calls on Virginia. The Vols finished the game with ten turnovers, and had they not found a way to beat the Cavs Sunday night, that likely would have been the leading takeaway after the game as to why.

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It got wonky down the stretch, but there were a lot of positives, too. Gillespie was clutch from the charity stripe. Ament, too. Even after missing most of the game due to foul trouble, Estrella had two huge buckets inside, one with two guys on him, late in the second half. Tennessee even lost the lead late in the game, but they still found a way to close and advance.

The Vols’ toughest test awaits in Iowa State, but we don’t have to think about that match-up yet. Tennessee has reached its fourth consecutive Sweet Sixteen and is just one win away from three-straight Elite Eights. What a run by Rick Barnes. What a run.

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No. 25 Tennessee has had an odd 2025-26 season. Barring a major surprise, the Volunteers will go into the Men’s NCAA Tournament with their lowest seed since the 2020-21 season. Tennessee got upset as a five-seed versus a twelve-seed, Oregon State, in the first round of the tournament that year. Tennessee could make it to the Sweet Sixteen, or they could get upset in the Round of 64 — neither would be all that surprising. One of the key, perhaps overlooked, players who will play a big part in Tennessee’s postseason success is Felix Okpara.

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Okpara has had a bit of an odd final season in Knoxville. Offensively, his usage rate is close to what it was a season ago. As brilliant a lead guard as Ja’Kobi Gillespie has been for the Volunteers this season, No. 6 in overall BPA per EvanMiya, the former Greeneville High School star is a stark contrast to former Vols great lead guard Zakai Zeigler. The Lob Connection, in particular, between Zeigler and Okpara was stronger and more comfortable. And yet, Okpara’s usage rate, his scoring, his rebounding, his field goal percentage, etc., mostly mirror the former Ohio State Buckeye’s first season in orange.

Some of Okpara’s metrics are quite different than last season at Tennessee. His offensive rating is 124.5, the highest of his four-year college career. His defensive rating is 103, also the highest of his four-year college career. He’s also playing really good basketball for the Vols over the last month. He’s averaging eight boards a night over the last month, to go along with three games where he scored 15 or more points. He has seven blocks over his last four SEC games. Okpara was just named to the SEC All-Defensive team, too.

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Tennessee is 15th in defensive rating, per KenPom, its lowest mark since the 2020-21 season. Tennessee’s scoring droughts can be frustrating at times, but the Vols falling out of the top-10 defensively is more of the reason this year’s team is staring a five seed in the NCAA Tournament. It’s not just the defensive drop-off that has plagued Tennessee at times this year — part of it is bad injury luck, part of it is being a bit too thin in the backcourt, and part of it is that it’s really hard to sustain the elite level of success head men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes has had over the last four seasons.

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If the Vols are going to push for three-straight Elite Eights, Barnes’ bigs are going to have to dominate more than just on the offensive glass. The Vols miss Cade Phillips’ physicality inside, and you wonder what Barnes’ rotation inside would have looked like over the last month or two had he been healthy and available all season. You have seen flashes from Jaylen Carey and DeWayne Brown. JP Estrella has scored 20 points in back-to-back games and has had four fouls or more in a game only once since February 1. Barnes has needed Okpara to be his steady Eddie, and he has been that for him for the majority of this season. Without Phillips and without Zeigler leading the point of attack on offense and defense, Okpara has had a lot more on his plate to make it all work for the Vols.

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You can see it in his NET rating, and you can see it when opposing players make the mistake of challenging him at the rim. Okpara continues to be Barnes’ most reliable big man and his defensive anchor this season. You wonder where the Vols’ defensive rating would be without him, but it’s fair to project that it’d be far lower than 15th nationally.

Okpara doesn’t shoot threes, he doesn’t demand the ball inside, he’s not going to account for a lot of assists, but he’s been a winning player for Tennessee once again this season. He’s also playing his basketball at the best time for Tennessee, something the Vols and the rest of the bigs around him need as Tennessee starts its SEC Tournament journey this afternoon against Auburn.

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The Vols were blessed with a five-star freshman phenom lead ballhandler in Kennedy Chandler last season as the leader of the pack. Chandler, like Jaden Springer and Keon Johnson the year prior, was the freshman that Tennessee fans were most excited about. This year, though, there is no true freshman five-star lead guard that immediately figures to be a first-round pick in the NBA Draft in 2024. This year, Tennessee will likely have a stronger semblance to the 2020-21 team than the 2021-22 team. 

This year, head coach Rick Barnes brought in a five-star wing in Julian Phillips who figures to follow Chandler, Johnson, and Springer as a first-round pick in the 2024 NBA Draft. That being said, Tennessee is not limited in their guard depth without Chandler in the fold. Barnes did add talented four-star B.J. Edwards out of Knoxville Catholic High. However, Edwards is not expected to be handed the keys the way Chandler and Springer were the last two seasons.

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Instead, the 2022-23 Tennessee basketball team offers quite the balance between youth and experience. Returning are veteran ballhandlers like Santiago Vescovi, Josiah Jordan-James, and Indiana State transfer Tyreke Key. Also back are fan-favorite sophomores  Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack. Then, you bring in two freshmen B.J. Edwards and D.J. Jefferson to add to the mix as well.

On the surface, this may seem like a really crowded backcourt for Rick Barnes and company. However, with the departures of both John Fulkerson and Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, it is fair to assume a lot of the lineups that Barnes uses next season will be guard-heavy in nature.

The fantastic college basketball site, Barttorvik, lists the 10 Volunteers expected to be the biggest contributors this season with over half being guards, and D.J. Jefferson not even in the fold. One cannot overlook that Tennessee could still add this year’s Zakai Zeigler over the summer to bolster the guard depth even more heading into 2022. With BHH and Fulky out, it is fair to assume Tennessee will play faster, shoot more threes, and rely on their heavy arsenal of guards to get back to where they were a season ago.

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And yet, if I had to guess as of June 16 who Barnes selects for his starting five on opening night this fall, I’d suspect it would be Vescovi, Jordan-James, Phillips, Nkamhoua, and Plavsic. I don’t expect that group to lead the team in minutes, but I would expect Barnes to start big and adjust accordingly. 

For Tennessee folks worried about losing Chandler without a new five-star guard in the fold, worry not. Barttorvik loves the Vols, with the site’s algorithm favoring Tennessee as the No. 3 team in the country heading into next season based on their 10 expected main contributors. Only Baylor and Gonzaga, imagine that, have a higher 2022 Projective Effective Experience number. Outside of Phillips on the win, the Vols are going to lean heavily on experience. Good teams generally do.

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What this means is that Edwards and Jefferson don’t currently have a path to meaningful playing time for the 2022-23 Volunteers, which is absolutely the place you want to be if you’re Barnes. You have experience in Vescovi and Jordan-James, you have a transfer score-first veteran guard in Key, you have two sophomores in Mashack and Zeigler and you have two wildcard four-star freshman in Edwards and Jefferson ready if need be. Last year, Barnes was in a completely different spot with Justin Powell and Victor Bailey Jr. behind Chandler, Vescovi, and Zeigler. 

The backcourt roles seem very much defined already. When Barnes subs, Jordan-James will slide down for Key or Zeigler to enter the fold. The pressure of Vescovi, Key and Zeigler, and Jordan-James on the floor with one another is a four-man lineup to watch, both offensively and defensively early in the season. The Vols will likely lean heavily on a three-guard mix with Nkamhoua playing a lot as an undersized five so that the Vols can throw as many guard-heavy lineups out there as possible. The Vols have too much experience in the backcourt to not lean on guard-heavy lineups for the majority of games in 2022-23.

Key is perhaps the biggest wildcard of the bunch, though. He averaged 17.1 PPG for the Sycamores last season, but he averaged 33 MPG, too. It would be incredibly surprising to see Key play the same sort of minutes with the Vols. That number may be cut in half, perhaps.

So, can Key score at a high volume at a High Major coming in from a Mid Major with less time on the floor? It’s a big question for this Tennessee team, especially when Zeigler kind of occupied that void for Tennessee as a freshman when a lot of folks expected Justin Powell or Bailey Jr. to perhaps lead the charge on that front. Key’s three-point percentage has fallen from 44 percent to 38 percent to 31 percent in his last three years at Indiana State.

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With Powell, Bailey Jr., and Chandler out of the fold, one area of concern for Tennessee’s backcourt is the three-point shooting. They’ll shoot them, but will there be more nights like the tournament game against Michigan with this rotation? The hope is that Key is that tie that binds there. Barttorvik agrees as Key is expected to have the highest offensive usage on the roster in 2022-23. 

But these are fun questions to have. It’s reasonable to assume Key blends in nicely and the Vols don’t miss Chandler all that much in the backcourt next season. The biggest thing, of course, is that the Vols are older and will primarily live and die with their experience with Julian Phillips sprinkled in on the wing. That’s exactly where you want to be if you want to be an elite college basketball team.

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Chase Thomas is the Sports Renaissance Man, Atlanta Sports Guy and Vol For Life. He is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee and resides in Knoxville, TN. Chase obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Georgia. He has written for a variety of publications that include Outsider, SB Nation, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, Cox Media Group & ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.

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I also host a very popular daily sports podcast called ‘The Chase Thomas Podcast’ that you should very much subscribe to here.

It is unlikely that I was the only Tennessee Volunteer fan that raised an eyebrow when news broke about Kentucky star center Oscar Tshiebwe electing to return to Lexington next season. I read that and my mind went to Kennedy Chandler. I’m sure a lot more folks in Volunteer Country found the same to be true for them, too. The last time we saw Chandler in a Volunteer uniform he was emotionally distraught following an upset loss in the Round of 32 to Michigan. This season and this team clearly meant a lot to the future NBA guard. He also recognized that with the loss to the Wolverines that this was it for Chandler sporting the orange and white.

Chandler was not the only star SEC player to find himself devastated over an early loss in the NCAA Tournament. Tshiebwe and the Kentucky Wildcats were upset by Saint Peters in the Round of 64. It remains one of the biggest first-round upsets in the tournament’s history. Tshiebwe, like Chandler, was in a position where all eyes were on them all the time. Both had the look and game that made you think they could lead their SEC squads to the Final Four. Of course, it was not meant to be as both teams took their “L” and went home to Lexington and Knoxville, respectively.

And then the North Carolina run happened. The Tar Heels somehow became the lovable underdogs who nobody saw coming. Hubert Davis’s team just kept winning. The history books will forever show that it was the Tar Heels of Chapel Hill that put the final in Coach K’s coaching coffin in the Final Four. Ultimately, the Heels ran out of steam as their brilliant starting five finally were rendered mortal in that second half against Kansas. However, fans at home could see how cool this collective group was with one another. With no future NBA draft lottery picks amongst the group, it was conceivable that they could run it back next season. It looks like that is going to be the case, too. It is an exciting time for North Carolina basketball fans because it looks like they’re going to be able to get more time to spend with a collection of players they fell in love with this season, especially during the tournament, and see if they can make it back next year. This feeling is what makes collegiate sports special in a lot of ways when your school stumbles into that right collection of guys that just might be able to win a championship for your university before they all go their separate ways.

This is how a lot of Tennessee fans felt about this year’s team. Even with the tough loss of Olivier Nkamhoua late in the season, part of what made the 2021-22 season special for Volunteer Country was the team finding their identity and leaning into it. Guys figured out their roles and ran with it. This season had it all with the five-star guard in Chandler to the unreal emergence from Zakai Zeigler to the cornucopia of bigs that head coach Rick Barnes had to cycle through over the course of the season. The team won their first SEC Tournament title in my lifetime. By tournament time, it felt like this team really figured out who they were and how to win together, similar to what happened with North Carolina. The Vols were No. 9 in KenPom, 3rd in defense specifically, and Volunteer Country collectively bought all the way in.

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Next year’s team won’t be the same, though. John Fulkerson has run out of credit hours, Brandon Huntley-Hatfield has entered the transfer portal and Kennedy Chandler declared for the NBA Draft and signed with an agent. Next year’s team is going to look different. Roles will have to be re-defined. The Vols will have to be extremely active in the transfer portal once again, especially on the guard front. B.J. Edwards might have to contribute early and often. Ultimately, the team that Volunteer Country fell in love with late last year will look nothing like next year’s team. However, that will not be the case at Kentucky and North Carolina. It’s just the way things played out this offseason.

But I cannot shake the $2 million NIL deal involving Oscar Tshiebwe. Sure, it needs to be addressed that Chandler is likely a first-round pick and Tshiebwe was looking like a late second-round pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. Their professional careers will not mirror their collegiate careers, that much is sure. Like Keon Johnson the year prior, Chandler figures to get drafted somewhere just outside the top-15. The Los Angeles Clippers took Johnson at No. 21 last season, and, with the selection, he will make, you guessed it, around $2 million for the next three seasons. However, after the second year of his contract, it’s a club option for the team and that team is now the Portland Trail Blazers as the former Volunteer star has already been traded this early in his NBA career.

So, Chandler figures to fall somewhere in that category as well. His first contract figures to pay him around that figure, give or take. This brings us back to Oscar Tshiebwe and that $2 million NIL figure. Could the powers that be in Knoxville not have worked something out there? Well, this also depends on what Chandler ultimately wanted and if he wanted to go pro then this conversation is moot. However, with how much he grew over the course of this season and just how well he played in the tournament to showcase who could be a lead guard on a championship team, you wish there was a way to convince him to put off the NBA for one more year, but also make it make sense for him to do so with the aforementioned NIL deal. With BHH out the door and Chandler on his way to the NBA, that’s two key five-star kids from Rick Barnes’ last recruiting class out the door in a hurry.

Turnover is the nature of the beast in college sports now. I get it. We all get it. But, man, when you think about how excited Kentucky and North Carolina fans have to be heading into next season, you cannot help and think about what could have been with Kennedy Chandler in 2022-23.

Chase Thomas is “The Sports Renaissance Man”, “Atlanta Sports Guy” and Vol For Life. He is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee and resides in Knoxville, TN. Chase also obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Georgia. He has written for a variety of publications that include Outsider, SB Nation, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, Cox Media Group & ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.