With a few weeks remaining in the college basketball regular season, Tennessee basketball is in line to receive its best seeding in the NCAA Tournament in the Rick Barnes Era.
So what is the ceiling for the Vols (20-6, 10-3 SEC), who currently hold the top No. 2 seed (No. 5 overall seed) in ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology and remain in contention for top four overall seed?
Will this be the year Barnes leads Tennessee past a Sweet 16? Or will this season be like last year when the Vols fell to mid-major Florida Atlantic as FAU made its own Cinderella run to the Final Four?
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Former Clemson All-ACC guard and Bradley Central alum Terrence Oglesby believes Barnes and the Vols’ fortunes will change this year, as he picked Tennessee as his team that can make a run in March and appear in Final Four in Phoenix on Thursday’s episode of the Dauster, T.O. and Fanta podcast on the Field of 68 Media Network that he does alongside Rob Dauster and John Fanta.
The reason? Dalton Knecht.
“If I had to pick one (team), guys I gotta go home to East Tennessee because I do think this is the year Barnes breaks through and makes a Final Four,” Oglesby — who played high school basketball in Cleveland, Tennessee — said. “I really do. I think the crazy part is last year, they made it to the Sweet 16 and they lost to a Florida Atlantic team that just hit their stride at the perfect time.
“This year, they have the same team that made the Sweet 16 and they added the most elite offensive weapon in college basketball in Dalton Knecht.”
Consistency and roster retention in today’s landscape of college basketball is extremely valuable, and the Vols fit that as Oglesby noted. Barnes has pretty much the same roster he had last season when Tennessee lost to FAU at Madison Square Garden in the Sweet 16. Aside from the addition of Knecht, the only subtraction from last year’s team is Uros Plavsic, who graduated.
But what Knetch — who is up for several national awards including the Wooden Award and Naismith Player of the Year — can do and has done on the offensive end is what the former Clemson Tiger believes can punch Tennessee’s ticket to Phoenix.
Tennessee has never appeared in a Final Four in program history, and has made just one trip to the Elite Eight (under Bruce Pearl in 2010). The Vols have made it to two Sweet 16s (2019 and 2023) under Barnes, losing both.
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“They have the same size, they still (have) the same physical pieces and they don’t have to worry about two flagrant fouls coming from Uros Plavsic that will just decimate you at the most critical part of the game,” Oglesby said.
“They can still grind you down on defense but at the same time, they have an offensive weapon (Knetch) with supreme scoring ability. … He does everything. He can shoot it, he can drive and he can finish above the rim.”
Knetch’s numbers speak to what Oglesby references, as the 6-foot-6 forward leads the team in scoring (20.0 points per game) and is averaging 4.9 rebounds per game while shooting roughly 48% from the field this season. He has finished in double figures in 22 of 26 games this season, 12 of which are 20 or more points.
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Oglesby wasn’t the only one to pick the Vols to play at State Farm Stadium in the Final Four on the podcast and give Knecht his flowers.
Dauster, who owns Field of 68 with college basketball insider Jeff Goodman, said this year’s Vols team with Knetch reminds him of the 2011 UConn Huskies team that won a national championship with Kemba Walker as its scoring engine.
“(UConn) kind of had one dude that could take games over and everybody else around him was good enough defensively where (opponents) knew you would be held in the low 60s, low 70s,” Dauster said.
“They were good enough on the defensive end that on the nights you needed him, Kemba Walker could go out there and get you 30 and you would win the game. And I feel like that is what Dalton Knecht is for this Tennessee team.”
Tennessee ranks third in the SEC behind South Carolina and Auburn in points allowed, with opponents scoring 67.2 points per game this season against the Vols.
Rick Barnes NCAA Tournament finishes
According to Sports Reference, Rick Barnes has 27 NCAA Tournaments appearances throughout his 37 years as a head coach at Providence (1989-94), Clemson (1994-98), Texas (1998-2015) and Tennessee (2015-24). He has made it to the Sweet 16 on 10 occasions and one Final Four during the 2002-03 season while in Texas.
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1989: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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1990: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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1994: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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1996: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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1997: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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1998: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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1999: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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2000: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2001: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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2002: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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2003: Lost in NCAA Tournament Final Four
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2004: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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2005: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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2006: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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2007: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2008: Lost in NCAA Tournament Elite Eight
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2009: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2010: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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2011: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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2012: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2014: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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2015: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2018: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2019: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
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2021: Lost in NCAA Tournament First Round
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2022: Lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round
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2023: Lost in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Dalton Knecht’s addition makes Terrence Oglesby believe the Vols can make a run in March
