College basketball success in late March can be the ultimate, because it often results to a trip to the NCAA tournament's Final Four.
There is nothing wrong with significant early March success as well.
Tennessee has already made this month meaningful by winning its first outright Southeastern Conference championship in 16 years. The No. 4 Volunteers achieved that feat with Wednesday night's 66-59 win at No. 17 South Carolina, improving to 24-6 overall and two games clear of their closest competitors with their 14-3 league record.
"This means a lot. We just beat our league," Vols fifth-year senior guard and Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht told reporters after his 26-point performance in Columbia. "We've got to go out and do it again at the SEC tourney, so we know we've still got another job to get done.
"We've got to go out and win the SEC tourney, and then we've got the big one."
Tennessee has never reached the Final Four and has made just one Elite Eight appearance since first qualifying for the NCAA tournament in 1967. This season's Vols have shown Final Four potential on multiple occasions, and their most controllable objective is to continue to improve.
The Vols will carry a seven-game winning streak into their regular-season finale against longtime rival Kentucky in the Food City Center on Saturday (4 p.m. on CBS), with their last three victories coming against the ranked trio of Auburn, Alabama and the surprising Gamecocks.
"I've told our guys that we can use this in a way to prepare us for the future," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Wednesday night in a news conference. "We went to Missouri and didn't play well but found a way to win, and we knew that every team we played here at the end would be in the NCAA tournament. We knew it was going to be hard, but we had to embrace it, because we could learn a lot about ourselves."
Said Vols junior forward Jonas Aidoo: "We've got a lot of momentum going, and we know that all these games are big. We still have a tough schedule ahead of us, and we're just taking each challenge one by one."
Saturday's game against the No. 15 Wildcats (22-8, 12-5) will be anything but meaningless for the Vols, who are fighting for their first No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Longtime ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi on Thursday afternoon moved Tennessee up in his bracket projection to the fourth and final No. 1 seed behind Purdue, Connecticut and Houston.
The Vols bumped Arizona down to the top No. 2 seed spot, with North Carolina next in line to provide the unique dynamic of those six teams hailing from different conferences. When asked whether the Vols are deserving of a No. 1 seed, Knecht said, "No doubt, but we don't care about the No. 1 seed or not. We just want to come out being ready to compete."
Knecht, Aidoo and Barnes said after Wednesday's win that an SEC championship has been a team goal since the team traveled to Italy for three games last August. Aidoo added that the Italy journey brought the team together quicker than normal because, "We were in a different country, and all we had was each other."
A run to the Final Four obviously would be more memorable than an SEC title, but nobody on Tennessee's team is belittling the Vols' recent achievement, nor are those who came up short.
"They're the conference champs, and you don't exactly fall into that status," South Carolina coach Lamont Paris said. "They have a good team that's experienced and tough."
Odds and ends
Barnes on Wednesday became the third Tennessee men's basketball coach to win 100 SEC games, joining Ray Mears (182) and Don DeVoe (107). ... The Vols have earned 11 league titles, with six of them outright: 1935-36, 1940-41, 1942-43, 1966-67, 2007-08 and 2023-24. ... Josiah-Jordan James now has 803 career rebounds, ranking ninth in program history. ... Knecht has nine performances of 25 or more points in his last 16 games.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.