{"id":197596,"date":"2026-03-19T10:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T10:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/197596\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T10:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T10:17:14","slug":"tennessee-basketball-opens-as-favorites-against-miami-in-ncaa-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/197596\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Basketball Opens As Favorites Against Miami In NCAA Tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Tennessee\"Tennessee<\/a>L to R: Bishop Boswell, Ja\u2019Kobi Gillespie, Nate Ament, Jaylen Carey. Photo By Elliot Walker\/Tennessee Athletics<\/p>\n

Tennessee basketball begins its run at the NCAA Tournament Friday when it faces off against 11-seed SMU\/Miami (Ohio). The RedHawks advanced to the Round of 64 after knocking off SMU 89-79 in the First Four on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Tennessee opened as 10.5-point favorites over Miami according to the DraftKings Sportsbook<\/a>. The over\/under is set at 148.5. KenPom<\/a> predicts the Vols to earn a 81-69 victory.<\/p>\n

Rick Barnes\u2019 11th Tennessee team is 14-19 against the spread this season. The RedHawks are 20-10 against the spread this season after covering and winning outright as underdogs against SMU.<\/p>\n

Miami (Ohio) earned an at-large NCAA Tournament bid after posting a 31-0 (18-0 MAC) record in the regular season. The RedHawks undefeated run ended with a loss against UMass in the opening round of the MAC Tournament but their regular season success was still enough for them to make the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

The RedHawks shoot 59.5% from the field, a mark that ranks fifth nationally, and 37.5% from three-point range, a mark that ranks 22nd nationally.<\/p>\n

Miami (Ohio) is extremely balanced offensively with leading scorer Peter Suder averaging just 14.6 points per game. However, seven different RedHawk players average double-digit points per game. Five different Miami (Ohio) have made 30-plus three-pointers this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More From RTI:\u00a0How Bishop Boswell\u2019s Childhood Foretold His Success With Tennessee Basketball<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTheir pace, and then just their ability to score or shoot the ball,\u201d Tennessee associate head coach Justin Gainey said.<\/a> \u201cI think Coach (Travis) Steele has done a really good job with this group. Spacing the floor, shooting it the way they shoot it, but they\u2019re also really good on the offensive glass, which I don\u2019t think they get enough credit for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re good. Anytime you can go undefeated in a season, you\u2019re a good team. I don\u2019t care what league you\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tennessee is back in the NCAA Tournament for an eighth straight time after posting a 22-11 (11-7 SEC) record ahead of the tournament. After winning eight of nine games from late January to late February, the Vols stumbled down the stretch losing four of their last six games.<\/p>\n

The Vols have made the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament each of the last three years including trips to the Elite Eight the last two seasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The winner of Tennessee\u2019s matchup against Miami advances to the Round of 32 to face the winner of three-seed Virginia versus 14-seed Wright State. Two Tennessee victories would send the Vols to the Midwest Regional Semifinals in Chicago with potential matchups against two-seed Iowa State, seven-seed Kentucky and 10-seed Santa Clara.<\/p>\n

Tipoff between Tennessee and SMU is at 4:25 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon in Philadelphia. Andrew Catalon, Steve Lappas and Evan Washburn are on the call for TBS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L to R: Bishop Boswell, Ja\u2019Kobi Gillespie, Nate Ament, Jaylen Carey. Photo By Elliot Walker\/Tennessee Athletics Tennessee basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,11474,91657,84627,90003],"class_list":["post-197596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-rick-barnes","tag-smu-basketball","tag-tennessee-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}