Tennessee basketball is chasing its second regular season SEC Title of the Rick Barnes era and is looking to earn a one-seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever with one week remaining in the regular season.
Where the Vols currently land in bracketology updates is split. CBS’ Jerry Palm has Tennessee as a one-seed in its Sunday night update while ESPN Joe Lunardi still have the Vols as the highest No. 2 seed.
Connecticut, Houston and Purdue are locked in to the first three one-seeds while Arizona, Tennessee and to a lesser extent North Carolina are battling for the final one-seed.
Entering the final week of the season, Arizona is 23-6 (14-4 PAC 12) while Tennessee is 23-6 (13-3 SEC). The SEC is much better than the Pac 12 but Arizona played an incredibly hard non conference schedule and is leaning on its neutral site wins over Alabama and Michigan State, a home win over Wisconsin and a road win over Duke.
The Wildcats quad one resume is their current best argument to be the final one-seed. They’re 8-3 in quad one opportunities which is better than Tennessee’s 6-5 record in quad one opportunities.
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But Tennessee has a far better record against quad two (6-1) and quad three (6-0) opponents. Arizona has much worse losses this season than the Vols and boasts a 5-2 record in quad two games and an 8-1 record in quad three games.
The good news for Tennessee is that they still have a number of quad one opportunities remaining. The Vols final two regular season games, at South Carolina and home versus Kentucky, are both quad one opportunities. If Tennessee wins both games, they’ll have as many quad one wins as Arizona. The Wildcats don’t have a quad one game left in the regular season.
Something else worth watching is that Florida currently ranks No. 32 in NET. If the Gators get to the top 30 in NET then the Vols will have an additional quad one win.
Given its better record against quad two and quad three teams as well as its stronger strength of schedule, if Tennessee gets to as many quad one wins as Arizona, they would have an extremely compelling case to claim the final one-seed.
With the SEC being far superior to the Pac 12, Tennessee will have more opportunities to earn quad one wins in the SEC Tournament than Arizona will in the Pac 12 Tournament.
Tennessee seemingly controls its own destiny in the race to earn the final one-seed. If they drop a game this week, they may need Arizona to fall again.
