Tennessee Volunteers NCAA Basketball Betting
For the second consecutive season and just the third time in school history, the Tennessee Volunteers made the Elite Eight. But head coach Rick Barnes and his Big Orange squad still have not cracked the Final Four code for Tennessee. Thus, Barnes will go back to the recruiting trail and portal to try and find the missing pieces needed to gain the first Final Four berth in Big Orange history next year. Barnes has put the Vols in the NCAA Tournament for seven consecutive seasons and won the 2022 SEC Tournament and the 2018 and 2024 SEC regular season titles. But fans want the Final Four most of all.
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2025 Tennessee Volunteers Season Recap
Overall, the Tennessee Volunteers are 29-7 straight up, 15-15-1 against the spread, and 13-18 over/under the total. Tennessee has national metrics of 149th for scoring offense, 139th for field goal percentage, 185th for 3-point field goal percentage, 100th for free throw percentage, and 100th for offensive rebounding. While defensively, Tennessee is 11th for scoring defense, 3rd for field goal percentage permitted, 2nd for 3-point field goal percentage allowed, and 18th for defensive rebounding.
Late on, Tennessee has covered four of its previous seven games and has gone under the total in four of its last six outings. Chaz Lanier is first among Tennessee scorers with 18.0 points per game.
Houston’s relentless defense confused and harassed Tennessee and carried the Cougars into their seventh Final Four and first since 2021. L.J. Cryer scored 17 points in a 69-50 victory on Sunday.
Emanuel Sharp scored 14 of his 16 points after halftime for top-seeded Houston and was named the region's Most Outstanding Player. Houston extended the nation's longest active winning streak to 17 games. The Cougars had been eliminated as a No. 1 seed in the Sweet 16 in each of the past two years, but this time, coach Kelvin Sampson's team has a shot at the program's first national title.
The Cougars have reached the national title game twice, losing to North Carolina State in 1983 and Georgetown in 1984 in the Phi Slama Jama era.
Sharp made four 3-pointers, and Joseph Tugler, who made the assist on Friday’s decisive basket against Purdue, had nine rebounds.
Chaz Lanier and Jordan Gainey scored 17 points apiece for the second-seeded Volunteers, who again fell short of the program's first Final Four appearance. Coach Rick Barnes' team was also eliminated in a regional final last year.
The nation’s stingiest defense held the Vols to 15 first-half points, the fewest in an Elite Eight game since 1979. It also was the lowest first-half scoring total by any No. 1 or No. 2 seed in a March Madness game since seeding began in 1979.
When the Vols had a chance to cut the deficit to single digits in the second half, the nation’s top 3-point shooting team made three straight from beyond the arc to extend the margin to 17.
How bad was it for the Vols? Consider that they made only 6 of 28 shots in the first 20 minutes and missed their first 14 3s before Zakai Ziegler finally ended the drought with 38 seconds left, cutting the deficit to 34-15 - far too big a deficit to come back from.
Tourney teams that trailed by 19 or more points at halftime are now 0-244 all-time.
Even in the second half, Tennessee struggled. The defense that outplayed Kentucky so thoroughly in the previous round couldn’t get enough stops, and while the offense improved, it wasn't good enough. Tennessee’s top scorers, Chaz Lanier and Zeigler, were a combined 5 of 27 from the field. Zeigler had five points and five assists.
Georgetown had the previous lowest-scoring first half in March Madness with 16 points in a second-round victory over SMU in 1984. That Hoyas team went on to win the national title. Miami matched the paltry first-half total in a 2013 Sweet 16 loss to Marquette and by Michigan in a 2019 Sweet 16 loss to Texas Tech.
Latest NCAA Tournament Results
| YEAR |
RESULT |
| 2025 |
Lost Elite Eight vs. (1) Houston 50–69 |
| 2024 |
Lost Elite Eight vs. (1) Purdue 66–72 |
| 2023 |
Lost Sweet Sixteen vs. (9) Florida Atlantic 55–62 |
| 2022 |
Lost Second Round vs. (11) Michigan, 68–76 |
| 2021 |
Lost First Round vs. (12) Oregon State, 56–70 |
| 2019 |
Lost Sweet Sixteen vs. (3) Purdue, 94–99 (OT) |
| 2018 |
Lost Second Round vs. (11) Loyola–Chicago, 62–63 |
| 2014 |
Lost Sweet Sixteen vs. (2) Michigan, 71–73 |
2024-2025 NCAA Basketball Top Teams
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