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East Tennessee College Basketball Teams Left At the Altar
You think UNCG has it bad? Vols will now likely play a Top 25 team if they beat Colgate, and ETSU continues to struggle with recognition.
Selection Sunday was a disappointment for local college basketball fans.
First, Tennessee forgot they hadn’t won the SEC Tournament after Saturday’s impressive come-from-behind victory against Kentucky and fell 84–64 to Auburn in a boring game made watchable only by Dick Vitale’s natural enthusiasm for the game.
Here’s a stat from the game; the Volunteers hit on 53 percent of their 3-point attempts as compared to Auburn’s 38 percent. But Tennessee was slow, as if playing with a hangover for the final three quarters of the game. The Vols committed 17 turnovers to Auburn’s seven. And what difference does it make what the shooting percentages are when somehow Auburn took 25 more shots from behind the arc?
So both the outright SEC Championship and the SEC Tournament remain out of reach for the Vols, not having won either since 1967 and 1979, respectively.
It’s not so much the Vols didn’t get a №1 seed; that will be forgotten in the coming days unless Tennessee fails to reach the Round of 16. It’s that the same old questions about Kyle Alexander and John Fulkerson’s contributions have reemerged at the very time they can’t afford to.
