Kentucky, Tennessee enter NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 matchup after big wins in early rounds
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Preview: Kentucky vs. Tennessee in NCAA Tournament
Click below to read more coverage from the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com ahead of Kentucky’s men’s NCAA Tournament game against Tennessee in Indianapolis on Friday.
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There can be no denying the chalk-heavy way in which the opening rounds of the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament played out.
The Sweet 16 features no team worse than a No. 10 seed (and that happens to be John Calipari and Arkansas) and a pair of No. 6 seeds, BYU and Ole Miss. That’s what will have to suffice this season in terms of potential Cinderella storylines as March Madness enters its second week.
Top-seeded teams did a good job of holding serve — often in dominant fashion — during the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament, and that includes the two schools that are front of mind for everyone in Central Kentucky.
Friday night’s dream Sweet 16 matchup in Indianapolis between No. 2 seed Tennessee and No. 3 seed Kentucky in the Midwest Regional will pit two longtime SEC rivals against one another for the third time this season. It will also be a meeting of two schools who are in fine March Madness form.
Mark Pope’s UK team dispatched No. 14 seed Troy in the first round by 19 points before turning back No. 6 seed Illinois by nine points in the second round. Rick Barnes’ Tennessee group kept No. 15 seed Wofford at arm’s length in a 15-point first-round victory before dominating No. 7 seed UCLA in an eventual nine-point win in the round of 32.
Neither the Wildcats, nor the Volunteers, have found themselves in close, crunch-time situations so far this March Madness.
In its first-round win over Troy, Kentucky led by at least two possessions for the final 22:38 of the game. In that second-round triumph over Illinois — which gave UK its first trip to the Sweet 16 since 2019 — the Wildcats led the Fighting Illini by at least two possessions for the entire second half.
Similarly, Tennessee didn’t encounter a close shave during its initial NCAA Tournament contests, which were ironically played in Lexington at Rupp Arena.
The Vols led Wofford — who are coached by former UK walk-on Dwight Perry — by at least two possessions for the final 33 minutes of that first-round game. And just like UK against Illinois, Tennessee led UCLA by at least two possessions for the entirety of the second half in the round of 32.
“We’re a confident team,” Tennessee junior forward Felix Okpara told the Herald-Leader after the win over UCLA. “We’ve just got to stick our hat on what we’re good at. Crashing for balls. Playing hard. Playing to win.”
Safe to say, scoreboard pressure down the stretch wasn’t a factor for either school as they made their respective ways to the Sweet 16.
“Our guys find strength in each other,” Pope said after the Illinois game when asked about UK’s strong start to the second half that put the game out of reach. “There were a couple of well-executed plays, but mostly it was our energy that our guys brought into the beginning of the second half and their intensity that was really important.”
Kentucky’s recipe to reach this point was well documented last week in Milwaukee. The Cats got a pair of standout scoring efforts from junior guard Otega Oweh (20 points against Troy) and fifth-year wing Koby Brea (23 points against Illinois, which matched his career high), but it was UK’s defense that has been the secret to its NCAA Tournament success thus far.
UK held Troy and Illinois to a combined 39.2% shooting from the field and 26.6% shooting from 3-point range. Pope’s team also turned up the defensive pressure against the Fighting Illini, forcing Illinois into 14 turnovers while the Cats only committed five themselves. Kentucky had a 26-8 advantage in points off turnovers in that game.
But what about the Volunteers? What’s the clicking the best for Tennessee as the Sweet 16 looms?
Against Wofford, it was a case of offensive efficiency from Tennessee’s best players. Fifth-year guard Chaz Lanier — a former star at North Florida and a transfer portal target last offseason for Kentucky — scored 29 points (which matched his second-best scoring total of the season) and splashed in six 3-pointers against the Terriers. Senior guard Zakai Zeigler had 12 assists in that game as the Volunteers shot better than 48% (26-for-54) from the field.
In the blowout win over UCLA, the keys to Tennessee’s success were distance shooting and rebounding. The Volunteers went 50% from 3-point range (11-for-22), with Lanier going 4-for-5 from distance himself. He’s now third in the country with 120 made 3-pointers this season — seven behind Monmouth’s Abdi Bashir Jr. for the top spot — and 10th in the nation with an average of 3.33 made 3s per game.
Okpara told the Herald-Leader after the UCLA game that setting off-ball screens to get Lanier — who leads Tennessee with 18.1 points per game — open has been a recent focus.
On the glass, Tennessee outrebounded UCLA by 10 (36-26) and the Vols enjoyed a 13-7 advantage in second-chance points.
“I think the most impressive part of our team is we still have room to grow,” Tennessee sophomore forward Cade Phillips said. “We’re a team that still hasn’t topped out. So, I think that’s why our two strongest performances have been the last two games.”
“It just builds more confidence,” senior guard Jahmai Mashack added after Tennessee’s dominant win over UCLA. “It makes you want to work harder. It makes you want to go faster, because we’ve planned this since the summertime … Being able to actually be here and be in the moment and finally all the dreams that you’ve been trying to plan for are here, you want to get the most of it. So every time we win, it just boosts our confidence up even higher.”
The regular-season data points offered by Kentucky’s two wins this season over Tennessee should also be taken into account ahead of Friday’s game.
Lanier, and the Volunteers in general, have had two awful shooting games from 3-point range against the Cats. Across both previous contests this season — UK’s 78-73 win in Knoxville on Jan. 28 and Kentucky’s 75-64 victory at Rupp Arena on Feb. 11 — Lanier is shooting 17.7% (3-for-17) on 3s and Tennessee as a team is 22.2% (14-for-63) from distance. That February home win against the Vols can also be pinpointed as the moment Kentucky’s late-season defensive revival began.
Tennessee had the rebounding advantage over UK in both of those previous games.
Still, plenty has changed in the six weeks since UK and Tennessee last played.
Aided by a less-restrictive shoulder brace, Kentucky fifth-year point guard Lamont Butler appears to be back to his best at both ends of the floor. One of the featured matchups of Friday’s game — which will be the first NCAA Tournament meeting between UK and Tennessee in 242 all-time matchups — will be Butler against Zeigler, the SEC’s defensive player of the year.
Zeigler himself is coming off a five-turnover performance against UCLA, which marked the second-most giveaways he’s had in a game this season.
Kentucky and Tennessee are poised to enter Friday’s Sweet 16 game as two of the most dominant teams, so far, in this year’s NCAA field. In this year’s Sweet 16, the Kentucky-Tennessee game is the only matchup between two schools that each won their first- and second-round games by nine or more points.
In fact, since the 2022 NCAA Tournament, only four of 32 total Sweet 16 games have featured a matchup between two schools that each won their first- and second-round games in the tournament by nine or more points.
The other three all came last year. For what it’s worth, the lower seeds won two of those games. In the 2024 edition of March Madness, No. 4 seed Alabama upset No. 1 seed North Carolina and No. 3 seed Illinois upset No. 2 seed Iowa State in the Sweet 16.
That’s some Pope and the Wildcats, a 3 seed, will be looking to emulate on Friday against Tennessee, a 2 seed.
Only once in Pope’s head coaching career has his team won a postseason game as the worse seed compared to its opponent. That came in the quarterfinals of the 2023 West Coast Conference Tournament, when Pope’s No. 5 seed BYU team upset No. 4 seed Loyola Marymount.
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 6:45 AM.
