Hope springs eternal for all 68 teams given passage into the best tournament in American sports. But Tennessee remains arguably the best program to never reach a Final Four, and with each passing season, the pressure grows. And when you look at this Vols' roster ... if not now, when?
LEXINGTON, Ky. — March should be, and largely is, the most magical month in college basketball. It's the month where 68 of the 364 NCAA Division I basketball programs get a clean slate and a chance to make a masterpiece. It's a month where, in theory, anything is possible, so it should be and generally is a stage where hope springs eternal.
The more a team wins during the season, the more advantageously it can position itself in this tournament. But no matter where the games are played, the winner advances and the loser goes home.
March Madness has fairly and squarely earned its name. One could argue that the Kentucky Derby remains the most exciting two minutes in sports, but the NCAA Tournament is the most exciting thing in American sports. There's nothing else like it. Where else can you learn of a college's existence while watching its basketball team beat one of the top teams in the land? Where else can you learn that Robert Morris and Fairleigh Dickinson aren't one person, but colleges that play Division I basketball and can win games in the NCAA Tournament?
The Coppin State Eagles. The Chattanooga Mocs. The Richmond Spiders. The Saint Peter's Peacocks. The Santa Clara Broncos. The Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders. The George Mason Patriots. The Hampton Pirates. The Lehigh Mountain Hawks. The Norfolk State Spartans. The Florida Gulf Coast Eagles. The Loyola Chicago Ramblers. The Oral Roberts Golden Eagles. The University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers. Those are just some of the names briefly thrust in the zeitgeist of the American sports world, and we have this magnificent tournament to thank for it.
History suggests another Cinderfella will emerge this season. It usually does. Maybe it'll be the UC San Diego Tritons. Or the McNeese Cowboys. Or the High Point Panthers. Or the Akron Zips. Or the Drake Bulldogs — and it's not a rap battle with Kendrick Lamar, so Drake has a chance.
Or … gulp … the Wofford Terriers.
This tournament is the best thing in American sports. It just is.
But it's never been a particularly pleasurable experience for Tennessee — which remains arguably the best program in the sport's history to never reach a single Final Four.
This writer has covered the Vols for a quarter-century, and the pressure on their coaches and players to break the Final Four seal is a real thing. Some coaches and players have admitted it at the time. Some have not. Some have admitted it after the fact. Some will tell you it never fazed them. That could be true for certain players on certain teams, but it's never been the truth for a majority of the locker room with any of those teams. And it's certainly never been true with many of the fans who support the Vols in these environments. They love Tennessee. They want Tennessee to reach the Final Four, and they believe it will happen, and they want to be there when it happens, and they're willing to pay premium money to make it happen.
But then the games start, and the anxiety is dozen-pound birthed into the building. And when things start to go wrong, they can implode in an instant.
The days of "Put your cup on for Tennessee" have largely dissipated in this historically unprecedented era of the Vols and Lady Vols being legitimate title contenders in virtually every sport they play.
But it still exists in the Men's NCAA Tournament. It's OK if you're too proud to admit that publicly, but you know it's true. We all know that we all know. History emphatically states that something will go wrong, and Tennessee will be unceremoniously sent home. In recent years it's occasionally been Tennessee heading home and then watching one or two teams lesser than Tennessee get to the Final Four.
Rick Barnes, as Tennessee's coach for the past decade, is the current face of the program's failure to make a Final Four appearance. Barnes has been the architect one of the most of the consistently successful periods in program history, but as was the case in all but one of Barnes' 17 seasons at Texas, those campaigns have been closed before the third and final weekend of this tournament.
Of course, Barnes has still been to a Final Four, which Tennessee has never done. And Barnes has consistently put the Vols firmly in the right. This is the fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament that Tennessee has entered with a top-nine Ken Pomeroy ranking, and the fifth time in the past six NCAA Tournaments the Vols have entered with a top-10 KenPom ranking. The Vols haven't been a No. 1 seed in any of those tournaments, so they wouldn't at any point have been the betting favorite for their regional heading in the first weekend. But the bracket has opened for them on on more than one occasion, and they've still stumbled. And when you step back and look at the full picture, failing to get at least one of those teams into the Final Four is a disappointment. To suggest otherwise would be naive.
But then, of course, you can look at things that currently feel more relevant.
Tennessee did not "choke" in last season's NCAA Tournament. Not even close. The Vols went to chalk as a No. 2 seed, advancing to the Elite Eight before losing to No. 1 seed Purdue and two-time National Player of the Year Zach Edey in a competitive Midwest Regional Final in Detroit. There were just two teams in the country that Tennessee needed an inside-straight draw of a game to beat, and the Vols got bracketed with one of them. Such is life for this program in this tournament.
But Tennessee as a program has consistently creeped closer and closer to that breakthrough, and it has made adjustments to help that cause. The Vols in recent seasons have been dogged by their occasional thunder-dud games offensively, so they started using the transfer portal to give much-needed juice on that end of the floor. They added Dalton Knecht for last season, and we saw how well that went. If Edey hadn't run it back for one more season at Purdue, Knecht would have been the National Player of the Year, and he was the most electrifying, must-watch player in the college game.
When the Knecht team fell just short of a Final Four, you couldn't blame anyone who questioned whether any Tennessee team would ever do it, at least for a while. But what did Barnes and his staff do? They went out and identified the closest thing to Knecht in the 2024 portal class — Chaz Lanier — and they fought off deep-pocketed NIL suitors to land him. And Lanier has been sensational. He hasn't been Knecht, but he's been sensational, and his ability to produce a 20-point half at any time is something most teams at this level don't possess. And Tennessee still has senior point guard Zakai Zeigler and senior guard Jahmai Mashack, arguably the two best defenders in college basketball. And Zeigler is perhaps the nation's best two-way point guard. And there's also senior guard Jordan Gainey, who has improved as much as any SEC player this season and has carried Tennessee to some big wins.
These Vols aren't perfect, but they're very, very good. They absolutely are one of the nation's best teams. They absolutely are a team with Final Four and perhaps even national-title potential. Do not for one moment let anyone convince you otherwise. You've watched this team play. You know what it can do. It just needs to do it one game at a time for four games, and it could make program history by following the historically well-worn path of Tennesseans to San Antonio.
But if that doesn't happen, four words will become front and center for this program and this coaching staff.
"If not now, when?"
There are so many seniors on this team. At the very least, Zeigler, Lanier, Mashack, Gainey and Igor Miličić Jr. won't be back next season. Barnes has transitioned to the portal era as well or better than any coach of his generation in any college sport, and he doesn't get nearly enough credit for that, but he's never in one season had to rebuild an entire backcourt like that. The thought of replacing Zeigler alone has kept Barnes up at night for a while, and Mashack in so many ways is equally important to the machine. It's natural to wonder whether Barnes would use the departure of this class as the appropriate time to retire, though no one should assume that'll be the case. He could step away after this season or coach perhaps another half-dozen seasons or more, and neither would be shocking.
Barnes will put a competitive product on the floor as long as he stays in the business, because he's spent more than four decades doing that like clockwork. Doubt him at your own demise. He and his staff will find and develop players. They always do. But it would be surprising — not shocking, but surprising — if the 2025-26 Vols are as good as their four predecessors. That's so much production and so much program DNA to replace in one summer.
The future isn't here yet, and if you can't focus on the present in March, what are you doing? But … if not now, when? That's also a fair question. This might not be a last stand, but it could be the best opportunity for a bit, and that possibility can't be dismissed.
No pressure, right?
This article originates on GoVols247.