After a tough loss to South Carolina, Lady Vols basketball responded with a dominant, 98-53 win over Missouri on Thursday night. Now, on Friday, ESPN has updated its bracketology, projecting the 2026 NCAA Tournament field.
According to Charlie Creme, Tennessee is a projected 5-seed in this year’s March Madness. In the predicted bracket, UT would open up against either 12-seed Utah and Stanford, which would battle in a play-in game beforehand. The winner of that game would play the winner between 4-seed TCU and 13-seed Murray State.
The opening two rounds would be played on TCU’s home floor in Fort Worth. The top-four seeds across the country all earn the right to host the Round of 64 and 32.
If the Lady Vols make it back to the Sweet 16 for the second-straight year under Kim Caldwell, the likely opponent is 1-seed Vanderbilt. Other top seeds on the path to a Final Four are 2-seed Texas and 3-seed Michigan State. Those games would be played in Sacramento.
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Tennessee is one of 11 SEC teams projected to make the tournament. This is the second-most of any conference in the country, trailing just the Big Ten’s 12.
Next, the Lady Vols will host No. 4-ranked Texas in Knoxville. The game will air at 3 p.m. ET and airs on ABC. It will be a rematch of the Sweet 16 game that Caldwell and Tennessee lost a year ago.
Then, it’ll be a busy week with a road game at Ole Miss on Tuesday, home game vs. Texas A&M on Thursday and road game at Oklahoma on Sunday.
