Lady Vols basketball went on the road and took care of business with a ranked win over Alabama on Sunday afternoon. Now, ESPN’s bracketology, a projection of the NCAA Tournament field, is reflecting Tennessee’s 5-0 start to SEC play.
ESPN’s Charlie Creme has the Lady Vols up to a 4-seed. While it’s necessary to take any March Madness projection, especially one in January, with a grain of salt, being in the mix for a top-four seed is massive. The 16 teams seeded four or higher get home-court advantage for the first two rounds of the tournament.
In ESPN’s projection, the Lady Vols would host 13-seed Murray State in Knoxville to get the tournament started. The winner of that game would play the winner of 5-seed Texas Tech and 12-seed UC Irvine in Food City Center, as well.
The likely Sweet 16 opponent is 1-seed UCLA, which beat Tennessee by 22 points in Los Angeles earlier this season. Other top seeds on the way to a potential Final Four would be 2-seed LSU and 3-seed Ohio State.
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Next, the Lady Vols have another significant challenge. On Thursday, Kentucky comes to town as the No. 11 team in the country. Tip-off is set for 6:30 p.m. ET and will air on SEC Network.
Ahead of the game, Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell will meet with the media on Wednesday afternoon. At the top of the list of questions will be an injury update for star forward Janiah Barker, who was injured in the fourth quarter at Alabama and did not return to the court.
Still, without Barker, the Lady Vols handled business and won 70-59 to advance to 13-3 (5-0 SEC) on the season.
