KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – For the fifth week in a row, the University of Tennessee men’s basketball team is ranked first in both major national polls.
Tennessee (14-0, 1-0 SEC) is yet again atop both the Associated Press Top 25 Poll and the USA TODAY Coaches Poll, as announced Monday afternoon.
This is the 10th time, across three campaigns, the Volunteers rank first in the AP Poll. They previously held the top position once in 2007-08 and four times in 2018-19. The active five-week streak is the longest such ledger in program history.
Ten of Tennessee’s 12 all-time weeks in the AP top three, including nine of its 10 first-place positionings, are during the tenure of 10th-year head coach Rick Barnes. Among just seven programs to ascend atop the AP Poll in at least two of the last seven campaigns, Tennessee is 28-4 all-time while in the AP top three (24-2 under Barnes), including 14-2 while ranked first (13-1 under Barnes).
The Volunteers are featured in the AP Poll for the 69th consecutive week, a streak spanning four campaigns and dating to the 2021-22 preseason edition. That mark is 32 longer than the previous program record and is the third-longest active streak nationally, behind just Houston (95) and Kansas (74). No other program is at even 50-plus, while the next closest SEC school, Kentucky (31), has the eighth-longest streak and is 38 back of Tennessee.
This is the 43rd time in the last 46 releases the Volunteers are in the AP top 15, since Nov. 28, 2022. Tennessee is in the AP top 10 for the 65th time in the Barnes era, including earning a top-five spot for the 33rd time, with the latter mark just shy of doubling the program’s total (17) before his 2015 arrival. Tennessee also now has over four times as many AP top-two nods (nine) as it had before he was hired (two).
Barnes, a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame nominee for the second year in a row, has guided Tennessee to an AP top-five position four years in a row, a mark matched only by Kansas. He has also coached the program to an AP top-six placement in each of the past five seasons, which only Alabama, Houston and Kansas have also done.
The Volunteers won their only game last week, logging a thorough 76-52 victory over No. 23/RV Arkansas at Food City Center to begin SEC play. Fifth-year Chaz Lanier scored a season-best 29 points, while senior forward Igor Miličić Jr., tallied 13 points, a career-high 18 rebounds and a co-career-best five assists.
With two ballots missing from in the AP voting, the Volunteers registered 1,4840of a possible 1,500 points, as well as 40 of the 60 first-place positioning. In the Coaches Poll, it added one point and one first-place vote from last week, notching 764 of a possible 775 and 21 of a possible 31, respectively.
Tennessee leads a group of nine SEC teams in the top 25 of both polls, six of which are in the top 10. It is joined by second-ranked Auburn, fifth-ranked Alabama, No. 6/7 Kentucky, eighth-ranked Florida, No. 10/9 Texas A&M, No. 14/13 Mississippi State, No. 17/16 Oklahoma and No. 23/22 Ole Miss. Meanwhile, Arkansas, Georgia and Vanderbilt are in the receiving votes section from both outlets, while Missouri is also mentioned in that group in the AP Poll.
Now the only undefeated team remaining in the country, Tennessee also checks in at third in the NCAA NET rankings and fourth on KenPom’s list.
The Volunteers are back in action Tuesday at 7 p.m. for their SEC road opener in Gainesville, Fla., as they square off with eighth-ranked Florida, live on ESPN2 from the Stephen C. O’Connell Center. Listen on 103.1FM WIKQ beginning at 6:30pm.
