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Tennessee didn’t conquer all at the SEC Tournament this past weekend, but the Volunteers sure came close.
They were the No. 4 seed in a historically stacked SEC, and Tennessee took down top-seeded Auburn in the semifinals on Saturday. Then came the title game Sunday against second-seeded Florida, and the red-hot Gators were just too much to overcome in an 86-77 loss.
Rick Barnes’s team should take its runner-up finish in Nashville as a badge of honor, because the SEC ended up getting an all-time record 14 NCAA Tournament bids on Sunday night. The Volunteers are stacked themselves with standout players like Zakai Zeigler, Chaz Lanier and Jordan Gainey, and now they’ll turn their attention to their first-round NCAA matchup with Southern Conference champion Wofford.
The second-seeded Vols (27-7) and 15th-seeded Terriers (19-15) don’t share much in common, except that both schools are located in the South, with Wofford being in Spartanburg, S.C. But on Thursday night at approximately 6:50 p.m. ET at venerable Rupp Arena in Lexington, they’ll share a court and a purpose — to advance to the second round of the Midwest Region and a date with either UCLA or Utah State.
So, what should passionate Tennessee fans know about the darlings from the Southern Conference who will try to ruin their team’s NCAA Tournament run and ruin some NCAA brackets, too? Well, here are 3 things to know about Wofford:
1. Wofford has some serious depth
Wofford is a unique team in that it plays 9 guys, who all play at least 15 minutes per game. There aren’t that many other teams in the country who play that many guys, and it’s even more unique for a Southern Conference team to have that kind of depth. This is something extra for Barnes’s team to prepare for.
This doesn’t mean Vols fans should panic or anything, but that depth is likely a big reason why the Terriers were able to absorb 15 losses through the regular season and still have enough juice to win their conference tournament.
If Thursday’s game is close enough for long enough, that depth could be an issue for Tennessee to deal with.
2. The Terriers are resilient
You don’t lose 15 games in a regular season and still win your conference tournament without some serious inner belief that when the chips are down and it matters most, you can still get it done.
That’s exactly what Wofford did though in the Southern Conference Tournament. The Terriers were barely over .500 at 10-8 in finishing 6th in the conference during the regular season.
Then they were able to flip a switch in the tournament, taking out East Tennessee State in the quarterfinals and VMI in the semifinals before upsetting a 25-win Furman team in the championship game. All of this doesn’t mean they can suddenly take out Tennessee, too, but it just means they aren’t afraid of anybody or any do-or-die situation.
They’ve already been there and done that.
3. You can’t focus on one guy
Wofford is incredibly balanced it its production.
Senior guard Corey Tripp leads the Terriers in scoring at 14.3 points per game. But 5 other players average between 8 and 12 points per game, too, so Barnes will have to pick and choose how he defends Wofford on Thursday night.
Look, the Terriers were basically a .500 team in the regular season in a small conference, going 16-15 before catching fire in the conference tournament. Sometimes it’s those teams who flame out easily in the first round against big-conference teams. But it can go the other way, too, and sometimes those teams are the ones who take that nothing-to-lose attitude into the NCAA Tournament and keep things close in that first-round game.
Especially those teams who are so balanced like Wofford is.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
