2022-23 Tennessee basketball preview: schedule analysis
score city over here
Last year this got wrapped into a larger preview; this year it gets its own post. Tennessee will be playing 31 regular season games barring a cancellation or - God forbid - more COVID concerns. Assuming/hoping nothing goes awry, plenty of these games will be interesting tests, many of which they’ll be favored in but some in which they won’t. It’s a really intriguing mix on this schedule of opponents old and new, teams familiar yet different.
The problem is that Tennessee draws no interesting opponents at home - not even a Quadrant 2 game! - until January 3. They don’t play an NCAA Tournament game at home until January 14. It’s the worst non-conference home schedule Tennessee has put together since…well, 2018-19, but just imagine I’m saying a date further back in the past. I’m pretty sure you can get into all the November/December home games for $10 or less, and presumably one or two of them will be a School Supplies Night or Canned Goods Night that allows free-ish entry.
Either way, this figures to be a schedule with some really interesting and complex matchups on it, which works well for a team that’s got high expectations and a lot that can go right. Let’s explore it.
All numbers used are a team’s ranking in the Massey Ratings Consensus, which had ten rating systems involved at the time of writing.
Quadrant 1
Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
#34 USC (neutral)*, #40 Wisconsin (neutral)*, #5 Kansas (neutral)*, #31 Dayton (neutral)*, #10 Arizona (away), #68 Mississippi (away), #6 Kentucky (home), #49 Mississippi State (away), #37 LSU (away), #11 Texas (home), #30 Florida (away), #13 Auburn (home), #66 Vanderbilt (away), #23 Alabama (home), #6 Kentucky (away), #38 Texas A&M (away), #14 Arkansas (home), #13 Auburn (away)
Total games: 14 with the possibility of 16
This is another year where Tennessee’s non-conference home schedule is mostly middling but the conference home schedule + full season road/neutral slate is truly something else. At least by computer projections they’re slated to play a minimum of 14 Quadrant 1 games, which is basically half the schedule. You get crazy amounts of battle-tested narratives if you put together something like this. Tennessee’s projected to play as many as nine games against top 25 opponents, and this doesn’t count an exhibition match with Gonzaga last week.
Tennessee’s Battle 4 Atlantis experience actually has zero guaranteed Quadrant 1 opponents. Butler barely cracks the top 100 in metrics consensus, and potential semifinal opponent BYU currently qualifies as Quadrant 2. Still, this is going to be quite difficult to get through with any sort of, uh, “ease.”
Realistic expected record: 8-6 or more likely 9-5 against the in-stone opponents on the schedule. Tennessee will lose a few games because this is a hilariously difficult group to work with, but 8 or 9 wins against this group means you’re picking off no fewer than 3-4 of them on the road. If Tennessee remains as good as they were last year at home, it’s pretty plausible. Add 1-2 Quadrant 1 games to this via the Battle 4 Atlantis and assume a 1-1 record. If that’s the case, Tennessee may get 9 or even 10 Quadrant 1 wins; only seven teams got to 9 last year, only four got to 10.
Hypotheticals:
A top 5 team would expect to go 9-5.
Top 10: 8-6 or 9-5.
Top 25: 7-7 or 8-6.
Top 40: 6-8 or 7-7.
Quadrant 2
Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
#51 Colorado (neutral), #94 Butler (neutral), #54 BYU (neutral)*, #88 NC State (neutral)*, #55 Maryland (neutral), #49 Mississippi State (home), #110 South Carolina (away), #66 Vanderbilt (home)
Total games: 6 with the possibility of 8
The problem with having all of your games in Quadrant 1 is that every other section gets boring pretty fast. Tennessee has just six confirmed Quadrant 2 games, which could very well change. However, they only had five last year, so who knows. Regardless, all of these games are ones Tennessee will or would be favored in, but none are super-obvious gimmes and all are tricky in some fashion. Like I said last year, these are games that feel bad when you lose them but aren’t really all that damaging. Consider that only eight teams went undefeated against Quadrants 2-4 last year if one of these games go sour, including the national champion.
Worth noting here that Colorado is a “neutral” game but seeing as it’s in Nashville, this is a home game by a different name.
Realistic expected record: 5-1. Tennessee’s expected record here of the five games that are actually scheduled is indeed 5-1, and they’re given about a 36% chance to go undefeated. You can add in a win for either of those potential neutral-site games, but it also makes it harder to get through this unscathed. Still, 36% is actually better than what the projections said last year, so it’s very possible to get out alive.
Hypotheticals:
A top 5 team would expect to go 5-1 or, possibly, 6-0.
Top 10: 5-1.
Top 25: 4-2 or 5-1.
Top 40: 4-2.
Quadrant 3
Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 136-240
#138 Georgia (home), #110 South Carolina (home), #82 Missouri (home)
Total games: 3
Three games that would be pretty annoying losses and actually would threaten your resume somewhat. None are true road games, and while Butler certainly could beat that #106 projection, Tennessee still figures to be a safe favorite in a game they’ll have a full week to prepare for. Their odds of going undefeated against this group, per KenPom: 71%. Because of how college basketball works, one of these games will be a sleepwalk affair where Tennessee farts around for 37 minutes then wins by seven points. Any of the SEC home fixtures are contenders for that because they’re all directly before huge home games.
Quick note that I think Missouri is hilariously underrated by the consensus, considering they’re top 50 on KenPom.
Realistic expected record: 3-0. Do not lose these games, man. The top 10 in NET last year went a combined 49-1 against Quadrant 3, and precisely one of the 1-2 seeds - Duke, of course - lost any game at all to a Q3 side. Do not do it.
Hypotheticals:
A top 5 team would expect to go 3-0.
Top 10: 3-0
Top 25: 2-1 or 3-0.
Top 40: 2-1.
Quadrant 4
Home 161+, Neutral 201+, Away 241+
#318 Tennessee Tech (home), #215 Florida Gulf Coast (home), #336 McNeese State (home), #306 Alcorn State (home), #241 Eastern Kentucky (home), #254 Austin Peay (home)
Total games: 6
This is the Suckin’ Six. Sorry, workshopping that, please do not get offended or feel hurt. Tennessee generally has at least one non-conference home game you can look forward to every year. They do this year - Texas in January - but that’s part of a yearly Big 12/SEC contract. All six of these are buy games.
You can read this as Tennessee either knowing that the schedule was already tough enough, or you can read it as the vast majority of high-end teams probably being very disinterested in playing a true road game against a team starting the season 4th in KenPom and 11th in the AP Poll. Both are likely true, if I had to guess. Anyway, Tennessee will be gigantic favorites in all six; Ken’s site gives the shortest point spread as 25 points. I would set the cumulative point differential for this at +170, which is +28.3 per contest. If any of these are within 15 at game’s end you’re allowed to be upset for a couple hours. Maybe even 20, though garbage time can cloud that.
Realistic expected record: 6-0. Tennessee is given a 97% chance to go 6-0 here. Even Torvik, which is higher on some of these teams, says 90%. You have to get down to 22nd in NET to find the first Quadrant 4 loss last year. Take the kids to these, or perhaps your friend that’s not super big into basketball but wants a cheap night out.
No hypotheticals are needed here because every single top-40 team should go 6-0 in this scenario.
November
7th: #318 Tennessee Tech (home)
13th: #51 Colorado (semi-home)
16th: #215 Florida Gulf Coast (home)
23rd: #94 Butler (neutral)
24th (Thanksgiving): #34 USC or #54 BYU (neutral)
25th (Black Friday): any of #5 Kansas, #31 Dayton, #40 Wisconsin, or #88 NC State (neutral)
30th: #336 McNeese State (home)
Tennessee starts the season with an easy win and closes November with the same. In between, there’s a few interesting tests. Colorado projects as an NIT-level squad but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them overachieve as a bubble team. Butler is in Thad Matta’s first year and every media account seems convinced that’s gonna work perfectly, so they may overachieve, too. The real meat here is the Battle 4 Atlantis. Tennessee will play an NCAA Tournament-level team on Thanksgiving Day. If they win, they’re most likely to play Kansas or Dayton on Black Friday, but these preseason tournaments are genuinely very hard to predict.
Tennessee frankly has to exit this month at 6-1 or better. Of the games that are 100% happening (AKA, not either/or games), Tennessee projects as no less than an 86% favorite in any of them, per KenPom. They’d be about 80% to beat BYU and 73-74% to beat USC. Either loss would frankly be disappointing. Tennessee should be playing in the Battle 4 Atlantis title game on Black Friday, given that they’ve got roughly a 69% shot to get there. (KenPom: 94% to make the semis, 74% to make the final, 49% to win it. Torvik: 87% semis/64% final/42% to win it. Either way, Tennessee’s gotta go no worse than 2-1 in this tournament.)
I’m keeping this at 6-1 or better because the odds of going 7-0 in November are about 40%. That’s still really good, but don’t be surprised by a loss somewhere, likely in that title game.
December
4th: #306 Alcorn State (home)
7th: #241 Eastern Kentucky (home)
11th: #55 Maryland (neutral)
17th: #10 Arizona (away)
21st: #254 Austin Peay (home)
28th: #68 Mississippi (away)
December is where the rubber sort of meets the road. Tennessee follows up the Battle 4 Atlantis with three home buy games you can take the kids to. Then they play one home game in a four-week span. The first game all season where Tennessee will be a KenPom underdog is on the 17th, when Tennessee makes a return visit to an Arizona fanbase that is somehow still upset about the officiating in last December’s game. Maryland is Brooklyn is a weird one but Maryland comes to New York directly off of a brutal three-game run (road Louisville, home Illinois, road Wisconsin). Mississippi is tricky, but Tennessee projects as a five-point favorite.
Tennessee’s expectation here is 5-1 with about a 32% chance of going 6-0, per KenPom. (They’re at 72% to win at least five games.) I don’t think this should come as a surprise. The obvious highest chance of a loss is the road game against Arizona. Depending on how Battle 4 Atlantis goes, Tennessee very well could enter that game at 10-0. Frankly, anything worse than 9-1 would be pretty upsetting. Mississippi projects as the second-toughest game; Tennessee has a 33.3% chance of winning both road games. Still, your cumulative November/December record is most likely to be 11-2 with a decent shot at 12-1. Only twice in the last 13 seasons has Tennessee entered January with two or fewer losses: 2018-19 and 2009-10. I think most people liked those seasons.
January
3rd: #49 Mississippi State (home)
7th: #110 South Carolina (away)
10th: #66 Vanderbilt (home)
14th: #6 Kentucky (home)
17th: #49 Mississippi State (away)
21st: #37 LSU (away)
25th: #138 Georgia (home)
28th: #11 Texas (home)
SEC play well and truly gets rolling, though Tennessee doesn’t play a guaranteed NCAA Tournament side until their fifth game in-conference. (This is part of why I think Tennessee may have a minor leg up in the title race.) At minimum, Tennessee should have three wins at home this month without having to exert maximum effort. Even South Carolina on the road shouldn’t be that problematic, as Tennessee projects as an 8-9 point favorite.
So this month comes down to four games: home Kentucky, away Mississippi State, away LSU, home Texas. KenPom gives Tennessee an expected record of 2.5-1.5 in those four games. Add in the four surrounding ones and Tennessee’s expectation is 6-2 with a real shot of 7-1. Merging the KenPom/Torvik projections gives the Vols a 71% shot of exiting this month with no fewer than six wins, which would be terrific. If you do that, you’re adding two Quadrant 1 wins at minimum.
That puts your cumulative record anywhere from 17-4 to 19-2, which would be a pretty terrific start to the season. Buckle up.
February/March
1st: #30 Florida (away)
4th: #13 Auburn (home)
8th: #66 Vanderbilt (away)
11th: #82 Missouri (home)
15th: #23 Alabama (home)
18th: #6 Kentucky (away)
21st: #38 Texas A&M (away)
25th: #110 South Carolina (home)
28th: #14 Arkansas (home)
March 4th: #13 Auburn (away)
Now it gets fun. Well, “fun.” Tennessee closes the season with an 11-game stretch (backdating to Texas) that, as constructed, features nine Quadrant 1 games. Only home Missouri and home South Carolina don’t qualify. (Vanderbilt is close enough at 76th that I’m allowing it.) This will be, without question, the toughest run of Tennessee’s schedule. It is not difficult at all to envision Tennessee starting February 1st at something like 18-3 (7-1 SEC), which all but guarantees their status as a top 10 team in the AP Poll and potentially top five.
The problem with being in a great basketball conference is that, eventually, your runway runs out. It gets very real for Tennessee very fast. Both KenPom and Torvik give an expected record of 7-3, and if Tennessee is able to match that you should be happy and run with it. Tennessee will play four road games against likely NCAA Tournament sides to go with three at home against preseason Top 25 teams. It’s brutal. 7-3 means you’re somehow scoring no less than four wins against that group.
Tennessee is given an 80-81% chance to win at least six games, which would be fine as well. (For the record, they have about a 32% chance to get eight or more.) That brings your cumulative, rough expected record to anywhere from 23-8 to 26-5, 12-6 to 15-3 in the SEC. That’s a great season, no questions asked.
So: is that enough to win the SEC in the best year of the conference since 2002? Maybe. It’s extremely rare that the conference has been among the elites in college basketball; 2021-22 was the first year KenPom had them ranked in the top three since 2006-07. 2022-23 projects to be more of the same. In the years Ken has on file (1997-2022), the SEC has been a top-three conference nine times. The average conference play winning percentage of the regular season champion in those years: .836. Converted to the 18-game schedule, that’s a 15-3 record in SEC play.
Barring a year like 2017-18 or 2015-16, it’s probably going to take 15 wins to win the regular season title. (That’s also the average number of wins by SEC champions since Barnes came to Tennessee in 2015.) I’d say even with added chaos, 14 is the bare minimum you’ll need to have a serious shot on the final day. Someone from the SEC’s top group will rise above to do it.
What this likely comes down to, of course, is schedule strength. Torvik actually rates Tennessee’s as the second-easiest of any conference member behind Mississippi; Kentucky is right there with them. However, KenPom states Tennessee plays three more Tier A (Quadrant 1) games than Kentucky against SEC opponents, while Arkansas also has a slightly less difficult schedule.
The benefit for Tennessee is two-fold: they only have to play Arkansas and Alabama once, and both games are at home. They do draw Kentucky and Auburn twice, which is obviously tough, but given that both of those are home games on a Saturday, life could be worse. We’ll see how all of this unfolds as the season goes on, but Tennessee will start the season on Monday with very realistic dreams of an SEC regular season title and 25+ wins for the fourth time in six years.