Even with football season in full swing right now, excitement is high for the 2025-2026 college basketball season right around the corner. For Rick Barnes’ Tennessee squad, the Vols’ season will begin on Monday, Nov. 3, with a home game against Mercer. That won’t be the first time we see the Vols hit the court, though. Tennessee will host ACC powerhouse Duke in a preseason exhibition game on Sunday, Oct. 26, in Knoxville’s Food City Center.
There are plenty of reasons to be excited about Tennessee’s team this year, despite the losses of program staples such as Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack over the offseason. Rick Barnes and his staff attacked the transfer portal over the offseason, bringing in talented players such as Maryland point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Vanderbilt forward Jaylen Carey.
Tennessee also struck gold on the recruiting trail. The Vols brought in true freshman Nate Ament in the 2025 recruiting class, who landed as the No. 1 overall prospect in 247Sports’ updated recruiting rankings. Ament will be an immediate impact player for the Vols and is already at the center of conversations about being the possible No. 1 overall draft pick in the NBA next year.
There will be a lot of new faces on this year’s Tennessee team, but the Vols bring back enough talent to make a run at a third straight Elite Eight appearance — and potentially more.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has been keeping basketball fans’ appetite full with monthly bracketology updates throughout the summer. And, by the looks of things, the rankings appear to be settling into fairly consistent spots with the season right around the corner.
Tennessee, for instance, hasn’t changed in the last three updates. Lunardi’s late-September bracketology report has Tennessee as the 3-seed in the Midwest Region (Chicago), which is the same spot the Vols had in both the August and July updates. The highest Lunardi had Tennessee was as the 2-seed in the West Region back in June.
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Lunardi’s projection has Tennessee facing 14-seed Charleston in the first round from Greenville, NC. His bracket also sets up Tennessee with a potential second-round matchup against either 11-seed VCU or 6-seed Texas Tech that same weekend. The Red Raiders also remain unchanged from Lunardi’s August update.
With Tennessee’s deep tournament runs and high-profile non-conference tournaments over the last few years, there are tons of notable blue-chip programs that Tennessee has seen under Barnes. Because of that, there are several familiar faces in Tennessee’s Midwest Region bracketology projection.
The obvious standout is 1-seed Houston, which beat Tennessee in the Elite Eight in Indianapolis last season. Tennessee will have a chance at revenge during the non-conference portion of the slate this year in a scheduled game against the Cougars in the Players Era Men’s Tournament from Las Vegas on Nov. 25. Perhaps Tennessee also sees Houston in the NCAA Tournament next spring, setting up a third game against Kelvin Sampson’s team in the span of a year.
Other notable non-conference teams in Tennessee’s projected bracket include 9-seed Creighton, which Tennessee beat in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, and 4-seed Illinois, which Tennessee beat last year in Champaign and will see in Nashville on Dec. 6. The region also has UConn as a two-seed and Wisconsin as the seven-seed.
SEC teams in the projected bracket include 5-seed Alabama, 8-seed Vanderbilt, and 10-seed Oklahoma. The Vols will see the Crimson Tide and the Commodores twice this season and the Sooners once in Knoxville.
Even with the controlled chaos that is the excitement of the ongoing football season, it’s never too early to start building towards basketball season and the eventual NCAA Tournament next spring.
Stay tuned to Rocky Top Insider for more Tennessee basketball coverage leading into the 2025-2026 season.
Check out Joe Lunardi’s September bracketology report for ESPN here.
