AUBURN, Alabama — Auburn will face an opponent who hasn’t lost at home this season while winning nine of its last 10 SEC basketball games as the Tigers travel to Knoxville to take on the Tennessee Volunteers. Tipoff is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. CST on Saturday, and the game will be televised by ESPN.
Bruce Pearl said the challenge his Tigers will face on Saturday is no ordinary one. “I think playing Tennessee at Tennessee would be as hard as winning a Final Four game,” he said. “That’s what it would look like a lot.” The Vols are 14-0 at Thompson-Boling Arena.
The Auburn coach said, “You want to play against big teams at the end of the year because that’s a great barometer for where you’re at. From a math standpoint, playing Tennessee on the road will be the biggest net win, if we can get it, of any game we’ve played all year.
“We’ve had some great wins, but because of their toughness at home, their ability to shoot the ball at home, how much they share the ball at home, we’re absolutely going to have to have our best afternoon ever. year. .”
Although 17th-ranked Tennessee holds a 78-44 series lead, the Tigers are looking for a seventh straight victory over the Volunteers. In the last meeting, Auburn won 77-72 last February at Auburn Arena.
Pearl said this season’s Tennessee team compares favorably to the 2018-19 Volunteers, who he said were the best UT team Auburn faced in its eight seasons as a Tigers head coach.
“This team here is just as good,” he said. “The difference is that this year’s team is actually better defensively. They return to you. They steal the ball from you. They put a lot of pressure on you. They fly everywhere. It’s one of Rick’s (coach Rick Barnes) best defensive teams.
A pair of guards, 6-3, 191 junior Santiago Vescovi and 6-0, 171 rookie Kennedy Chandler, are Tennessee’s leading scorers each averaging 13.6 points. Vescovi hit 79 three-pointers at a 39.3% clip and is averaging 4.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists. Chandler leads the team in assists at 4.8 per game and adds 3.4 rebounds plus a team-high 2.3 steals per game.
The Tigers, who are ranked third and fourth in major polls this week, won 85-63 on their previous trip to Thompson-Boling Arena to close out the 2019-20 regular season which was halted after that game due to the pandemic.
The Volunteers are 11-4 in SEC play, tied for third place with Arkansas, behind 13-2 Auburn and 12-3 Kentucky. Tennessee won 80-61 at Missouri in its first game of the week on Tuesday while Auburn improved to 25-3 overall with a 77-64 win at home Wednesday against Ole Miss.