Selection Sunday is just over four week away and that means the NCAA gave us our first glimpse at a potential NCAA Tournament field.
With just over a month away from the tournament, the NCAA Tournament Bracket Preview showed the current top 16 teams and the top four seeds in all four regions on Saturday afternoon.
Tennessee comes in as a two-seed in the Midwest Region and the No. 6 overall team in the country as of Feb. 17. The other top teams in the Midwest Region include one-seed Purdue, three-seed Baylor and four-seed San Diego State.
The five teams that currently come in ahead of Tennessee in the seeding includes Purdue, UConn, Houston, Arizona and North Carolina. Tennessee is one of three SEC teams on the top four lines as well as three-seed Alabama and four-seed Auburn.
More From RTI: Tennessee Basketball Opens As Massive Favorites Against Vanderbilt
Rick Barnes’ ninth Tennessee team is currently 18-6 (8-3 SEC) with seven games remaining in the regular season before they travel to Nashville for the SEC Tournament. The Vols host Vanderbilt in Knoxville on Saturday night before traveling to Missouri and hosting Texas A&M next week.
Tennessee’s manageable next three games lead into an incredibly difficult final four game stretch of the regular season where they’ll host Auburn, travel to Alabama and South Carolina before hosting Kentucky in Knoxville for the regular season finale.
The Vols are currently one-game back of Alabama who is atop the SEC standing and half a game behind both South Carolina and Auburn in the conference race. Analytics based college basketball site BartTorvik.com gives Tennessee a 29% chance of winning a share of the regular season title and a 11% chance of winning it outright. Alabama is the favorite to win the SEC (59% share, 32% outright) followed by Auburn (48.3% share, 21% outright) and Tennessee.
Tipoff between Tennessee and Vanderbilt is at 6 p.m. ET on Saturday night. Roy Philpott and Pat Bradley are on the call for the SEC Network.
