What Tennessee accomplished in latest Rupp Arena triumph

Wins at Rupp Arena for opposing teams are hard to come by, though Rick Barnes’ Tennessee teams have had more success than most.

The fashion in which the Vols beat Kentucky Saturday night in Lexington left a couple of impressionable marks.

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In a game with heavy SEC title implications between two top 10 teams, No. 5 Tennessee won 103-92 behind a prolific shooting performance. The Vols shot better than 48% from the field and another 40% from three-point range.

Perhaps the most positive outcome for Tennessee aside from the win itself was the reemergence of the rest of its lineup.

After Dalton Knecht had carried a bulk of the load offensively in the previous six games, the Vols got the most from their veteran starters with Zakai Zeigler and Josiah-Jordan James totaling 26 points each while Santiago Vescovi and Jonas Adioo scored 11 points each.

Tennessee now heads into a manageable stretch on a high note, back in position to move up the conference standings and compete for a regular season crown.

A surprising and uncharacteristic home loss to South Carolina last week made the Vols trip to Rupp Arena loom even larger and Tennessee provided a resounding response that will be remembered for awhile.

The Vols, whose 11-point win tied its largest margin of victory against Kentucky in program history, accomplished feats that hadn't been done in awhile on the Wildcats' vaunted home floor.

Tennessee and Kentucky have featured a number of high profile, ranked clashes over the last nine years.

Saturday marked the eighth time that a Kentucky team was ranked in the Associated Press top 10 in the series since Barnes took over the Vols in 2015. Tennessee is now 7-1 in those match ups.

In a long-standing series that has been largely dominated by Kentucky, the Vols have turned a corner under Barnes, holding an 11-9 record in regular season meetings between the two teams, which is five more wins than any other team in college basketball against the Wildcats under head coach John Calipari. Tennessee was 9-35 in the previous 22 seasons leading up to Barnes' arrival in Knoxville.

Four of those wins have come at Rupp Arena, which is twice as many games as Tennessee has won against Kentucky on the road in a 36-year span between 1979 and 2015.

James and Vescovi, both fifth-year players, will finish their college careers with a 3-2 record in games played at Kentucky, including wins during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.

Winning in Lexington is one thing, but having the kind of offensive production Tennessee had on Saturday is another.

Tennessee is the first team to score 100 or more points vs. Kentucky at Rupp Arena since Virginia Military Institute beat the Wildcats, 111-103 on Nov. 15, 2008 and just the fourth opposing team to do it all-time. The Vols are the first SEC team in 30 years to reach the century mark against Kentucky since Arkansas scored 101 points at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville on Feb. 10, 1993.

Tennessee's 103 points, which were a season-high, marked the third time the Vols have eclipsed 100 points against Kentucky after scoring 103 on Feb. 15, 1975 and 107 on Jan. 21, 1992. It was the most points Tennessee had ever scored at Rupp Arena, beating out its previous high of 88 points on March 7, 1992.

The Vols last scored 100 points in a road game on Dec. 15, 2018 against Memphis at FedEx Fourm. Their last 100-plus point performance on the road in a league game was a 101-point outing on Feb. 16, 1993 at Arkansas.

Tennessee, which faced one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country in the first month of the season, continues to bolster its resume.

The Vols are the first team since Auburn in 2019 to play three of the winningest programs in college basketball history in Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas in a single season. Tennessee is 1-2 in those match ups this season, but its win over Kentucky moved it to 8-3 in its last 11 games against AP top 10 teams.

The Vols' win over Kentucky marked the program's 13th road win over an AP top 10 team and the second under Barnes, joining Tennessee's 81-73 victory against the Wildcats on March 3, 2020.

Tennessee is 11-12 in all-time games against top 10 teams but is 7-5 in Barnes' tenure.

The Vols have six upcoming games against currently unranked teams, starting with LSU at Food City Center on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET, SEC Network). As it stands, Tennessee's next ranked match up is against No. 16 Auburn in Knoxville on Feb. 28.

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