'It wasn't a great feeling': Tennessee doesn't want another one-and-done SEC Tournament

The scouting reports were done before Tennessee players boarded the bus Wednesday afternoon to leave for the SEC Tournament in Nashville. All three possible opponents in Friday’s quarterfinals — No. 5 Texas A&M, No. 12 Vanderbilt or No. 13 Texas — had already been picked apart.

“Coaches have already went back and looked at games since we played them and all that,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said before practice Wednesday. “And then they all have a chance to go to the game and see if there’s anything prior to us or whoever it is that we play. 

“But we’ve got all that done now and we’ll just wait and see who it is.”

Up Next: No. 4 Tennessee vs. No. 13 Texas, Friday: 3:30 p.m. ET

Texas (19-14) is who it is, after the Longhorns beat Vanderbilt Wednesday afternoon and Texas A&M in double overtime Thursday, setting up the quarterfinal matchup with Tennessee (25-6) at Bridgestone Arena. Friday’s game is scheduled for a 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time start on ESPN. 

Associate head coach Justin Gainey said Thursday afternoon there would be a recent history lesson to go with the Texas scouting report. 

Tennessee doesn’t want to be one-and-done at the SEC Tournament again, not after falling flat in a 73-56 loss to Mississippi State as the No. 1 seed a year ago. 

“We haven’t sat down as a team and talked about it yet,” Gainey said. “We will do that (Thursday night) as we kind of close in on who we think we’ll be playing, start preparing for that and with scouting and all that good stuff. But it will be something that we talk about.”

The Mississippi State game, the first game of the postseason, was arguably Tennessee’s worst 40 minutes of basketball all season. And it came on the heels of a loss to Kentucky on Senior Day at Food City Center. 

But it wasn’t a sign of things to come. The Vols went from a no-show in Nashville to an Elite Eight run — just the second in program history — over the next two weeks.

“Did that have anything to do with it?” Gainey asked if the SEC Tournament loss. “I don’t know. But I do know that every game we play we want to win, right?” 

‘Going into the (NCAA) Tournament you have a little uneasiness about how that performance went’

Tennessee’s season isn’t on the line at the SEC Tournament. The Vols are comfortably on the No. 2-seed line in NCAA Tournament projections and could stake claim to the final No. 1 seed should Florida and Alabama struggle.

But every basketball team wants to advance in every bracket. That’s as simple as Gainey could boil it down. 

“It’s about winning championships,” he said, “so this is the second tournament that we’ve had this season. And we won down in The Bahamas and it’s our intent to come here and try to win this one.”

That was the Baha Mar Hoops Championship in November, when Tennessee blitzed Virginia and Baylor over back-to-back days to take home the trophy. 

The reminder to the team isn’t about that tournament, though. It’s about the one that started the postseason a year ago. 

“It would be something we talk about with our team because it wasn’t a great feeling,” Gainey said. “It wasn’t a great feeling.”

March isn’t the time for that. 

“Going into the tournament you have a little uneasiness about how that performance went,” Gainey said. “When you go into NCAA Tournament, you want to feel good about everything.”