Show Me My Opponent, 2023-24: Norfolk State
It's no Rose Bowl but it'll do
Happy New Year, everybody. Tennessee resumes play after an unusually long 12-day break from hoops, the longest in-season break since a bizarre two-week break in Barnes’ first season. Norfolk State, the winner of the MEAC in two of the last three seasons, will be their first opponent of 2024.
Norfolk State is a huge underdog and generally performs pretty poorly against top-flight competition, but that shouldn’t discredit their status as one of the very best teams in conference play over the last decade. Since 2014, Norfolk is 116-40 in MEAC play, tied for the 15th-best win rate by any program in America. That’s infrequently resulted in NCAA Tournament bids because the MEAC Conference Tournament is a crapshoot, but when you win conference games at the same rate as Virginia and Kentucky that’s pretty noteworthy.
Once more, Tennessee leads unto the breach before SEC play begins. The Spartans are somewhat frisky but not traditionally against top-50 competition, against whom they’re 1-20 (one win against Avery Johnson-era Alabama) with an average scoring margin of -24.6. The goal, as always, is to not be a trending topic on Twitter.
BEHIND THE WALL ($): competitive in the MEAC, perhaps not competitive outside of it minus that one NCAA Tournament game you remember