By Camden Gober
CHICAGO — March Madness ends the same way for 67 teams every year, with their season ending in tears.
Unfortunately for the No. 6 seed Tennessee, their season came to an end at the hands of No. 1 seed Michigan in Chicago after a 95-62 loss on Sunday afternoon.
The Michigan Wolverines have been a thorn in Tennessee’s side for years now in the NCAA tournament. The Vols have now been put out by the Wolverines in four of their last 10 NCAA tournaments.
Michigan head coach Dusty May is now 2-0 against Tennessee in the NCAA tournament with a win today and another back in 2023 while he was at Florida Atlantic.
For the first time all tournament, Tennessee looked and played like the underdog. The Vols were simply outmatched from the tip against an absolutely loaded Michigan squad, which has all the pieces you need to win a national championship.
Tennessee did not die in one moment. It was death by a million cuts.
“Obviously, when you get to this point and you don’t move on, it’s extremely disappointing, especially when you know you weren’t at your best, and you need to be at your best at this time,” said Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes.
Coming into the game, it was interesting to see how this game would play out given that the Wolverines’ offense is an unstoppable force, and the Vols having one of the best defenses in the country. I think it’s safe to say that Michigan won that battle.
Tennessee came into the day holding its opponents to just 68.9 points per game, while Michigan entered today averaging 87.5 points per game and 95 points per game in the NCAA tournament.
Tennessee simply had no answers to the Wolverines out in transition. Michigan finished the game with 21 fastbreak points and nine points off turnovers.
“I think they were getting out in transition and we weren’t getting back, and they were making shots,” said Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie.
“I’d say the same thing,” said Tennessee center Felix Okpara. “We didn’t do a great job cutting off transition. I think it was also the point of emphasis going into the game, just kind of taking on the transition game. But we didn’t do a great job with that, so they took advantage of that and they converted.”
Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg was leaps and bounds the best player on the floor today. The Vols did not have a good matchup for the Wooden Award finalist as he finished the afternoon with a game-high 27 points and seven rebounds. Lendeborg was one of five different Wolverines to score in double figures.
Gillespie did not go down without a fight, leading the Vols in scoring with 21 points. The Tennessee native led the Vols in scoring for the 18th time in his one and only season on Rocky Top.
Okpara, 10, was the only other Vol to score in double-figures.
Unfortunately, the Vols just went cold on the wrong day, against the wrong team. Tennessee shot a whopping 31% from the field, 19% from three, and 53% from the charity stripe. On the contrary, Michigan shot an extremely impressive 52% from the field, 37% from three, and an efficient 73% from the line.
“We’ve had games where we’ve struggled to score, but you’re playing against an outstanding team today that was scoring,” said Barnes. “Simply, we all have to get better. We all have to keep working at it.”
Tennessee ran into an absolute buzzsaw today, but to be fair, if Michigan continues to shoot this well from the field night in and night out, I don’t know if anybody can beat them.
Tennessee’s dream of ultimately breaking through to the program’s first-ever Final Four came up short yet again. Still, the program’s standard remains the same. The Vols have now reached the Sweet Sixteen for the fourth straight season, and the Elite Eight for the third straight season.
“We’ve been able to get here three years in a row, and it’ll be hard to get back to winning games just in the tournament,” said Barnes. “That first game of the tournament is the hardest one. But our goal would be to keep getting back and kicking and hopefully we can knock the door down.”
Would the Vols have liked to be the team cutting down the nets here in the United Center? Absolutely. That said, Tennessee already overachieved by making it back to this point after entering the tournament as a No. 6 seed, the lowest seed of the Rick Barnes era in Knoxville.
The Vols were given one of the toughest draws in the tournament, becoming the first team in tournament history to beat a 30-win opponent in both the first and second rounds. They followed that up with a win over No. 2 seed Iowa State in the Midwest Region.
So yes, Tennessee shocked a lot of people just by making it back to the Elite Eight.
Obviously, this loss is going to hurt for a while, but Barnes and his staff have a ton of key players and promising young talent returning next season. With the trajectory of the program continuing to rise year after year, the 2027 Tennessee basketball season can’t come soon enough.