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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
 Is Tennessee now a tournament team?
By Joe Kaiser

 If there was ever a road map for turning around a season, this year's Tennessee team just might have drawn it up. It goes something like this.

First, things have to get bad. In the Volunteers' case, they limped out to an 0-3 start in SEC play, and things didn't get better from there -- at least not for a while. A Feb. 6 home loss to a 10-11 Georgia team had the Vols staring at an 11-10 overall record and a 3-6 mark in conference. How could any team go from that to a true tournament contender in only three weeks?

Tennessee has done it by rattling off six wins in a row, including four attention-getters:
  1. A 30-point thrashing of No. 25 Kentucky in the Wildcats first game without Nerlens Noel
  2. A 10-point decision over a solid LSU team that came in with a 15-8 record
  3. A clutch 4-OT thriller on the road against Texas A&M
  4. And last night's statement win over No. 8 Florida

Suddenly, the Vols are 17-10 with a RPI that's risen all the way up to 52. How close are they to a tournament team? Here's our resident bracketologist Joe Lunardi with the very latest.

Joe Lunardi
Tennessee is now right on the cusp of the NCAA tournament
"After a night in which two of our 1-seeds lost -- Indiana at Minnesota and Florida at Tennessee -- here is my adjusted Bracketology. The Hoosiers stay on the 1-line, while the Gators drop off. The Volunteers, meanwhile, have soared all the way to the very top of the teams currently out of the bracket. They were in neither the First Four Out or the Next Four Out entering the evening."