Tennessee Basketball Season Preview: The Schedule

Aside from the usual struggles of dealing with the SEC schedule, this year the Vols will play three marquee non-conference games, a host of local and in-state schools, and three games in the Virgin Islands in the Paradise Jam Tournament.  Tennessee continues to put together a difficult schedule under Bruce Pearl, and this year will be no different. 

One result of the program's success is the presence of television cameras at Tennessee's games:  the Vols will play in front of a national television audience three times on CBS, and have six of their SEC contests scheduled for ESPN.  ESPN2 will pick up another three games, and all the other contests can be seen one way or another.

Here's a look at Tennessee's 2009-10 schedule, with more thoughts after the jump...

Some additional thoughts on UT's schedule:

• The Paradise Jam field includes Boston College, South Dakota State and St. Joseph's on the other side of the bracket, but the big fish is preseason #7 Purdue, who the Vols could see in the finals if both teams win on Friday and Saturday.  In the Vols' half of the bracket, Northern Iowa won the Missouri Valley Tournament and 23 games last year, but were bounced in the first round of the tournament by the same Purdue squad.
• The SEC/Sun Belt Classic game with MTSU is at the Somet Center in Nashville, the first half of a double-header with Vanderbilt vs. Western Kentucky to follow.
• The first real road trip of the season takes the Vols to Los Angeles to face our old friend Kevin O'Neill and the USC Trojans.  O'Neill can give Pearl a run for his money in terms of quotability when he wants to, so that should be a very interesting weekend.
• The New Year's Eve game at Memphis being in the late afternoon should keep Vol fans sane - if the Vols qualify for the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, it kicks at 7:30 the same night, meaning we could risk sensory overload but you won't have to choose between the two.
• Kansas enters the season ranked #1 in both polls, but before coming to Knoxville the Jayhawks will travel to Memphis, UCLA, and play consecutive December home games with #15 Michigan and #12 California.  Will they still be atop the polls when they get here?
• The Vols get a much easier start in the SEC schedule than they did last year, with four games against lower-half teams to open.  But the SEC East could be defined by a brutal three game stretch in February - at South Carolina, at Florida, vs Kentucky.
• There are no off-dates in the SEC schedule this year, meaning everyone will play two games every week, typically Tue/Wed/Thu and then Saturday.