A group of rowdy Illinois students greeted the Tennessee Volunteers men’s basketball team Friday night outside their team dinner in Champaign, Ill., with some jeers. Among them, that their No. 1 ranking in the AP poll wouldn’t last more than a week.
It was only a teaser for the type of environment the Volunteers walked into Saturday—one of college basketball’s most raucous arenas, against a team with a pair of potential lottery picks, would teach us a lot about where Tennessee truly stood among the sport’s elite.
