With No. 5 Tennessee experiencing a modest layoff between last Saturday's 85-81 loss to Kentucky and this Friday's quarterfinal matchup against either LSU or Mississippi State in the Southeastern Conference tournament, here are five fun facts concerning the Volunteers before they head to Nashville:
1. This is the first time Tennessee is the top seed in an SEC tournament following a regular season that didn't employ divisions. The conference didn't have seeding in the 1933-52 tournaments, and the Vols were never the event's top seeds from 1979-1991, or from 2012 through last year. Tennessee earned the East Division top seed five times from 1992-2011 and only went 3-5 in the tournament during those five occasions.
2. Zakai Zeigler has never lost an SEC tournament contest. Tennessee's junior point guard was Kennedy Chandler's backup in 2022, when the Vols traveled to Tampa and defeated Mississippi State, Kentucky and Texas A&M to win the program's first league tournament title since 1979. Zeigler scored 11 points against both the Bulldogs and the Wildcats. Last year, the 5-foot-9, 171-pounder suffered a torn ACL in a late February win over Arkansas and was out for the rest of the season.
3. League player of the year Dalton Knecht has scored 35 or more points five times this season. Should the fifth-year senior guard and Northern Colorado transfer reach that mark or even get to 34 in a game this weekend, he would break Tennessee's SEC tournament record of 33 set by Dale Ellis during a 74-71 upset of LSU in 1983. The league didn't stage a tournament from 1953-78, so both Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King missed out on the event.
4. Jonas Aidoo posted Tennessee's single-game high in rebounds this season with 15 during the 85-79 win at Georgia on Jan. 13. Although that qualifies as quite an impressive total, Steve Hamer's 21 rebounds during the 77-65 downing of Alabama in the 1996 SEC tournament appears safe.
5. Tennessee has experienced the most success in SEC tournament games through the years at the expense of Vanderbilt (9-1) and Mississippi State (10-3). The Vols have struggled the most against Alabama (5-11) and Kentucky (6-12).
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.