Tennessee reportedly set to host multi-team event in Knoxville

Piecing together a non-conference schedule for the 2020-21 season has proven to be extremely challenging in the ever-changing COVID landscape. Tennessee has already called off games against Wisconsin and Memphis, while also seeing their early season tournament, the Charleston Classic, canceled as well.

That leaves a pretty large gap in the schedule, and Rick Barnes has been working to fill up that dead time with the season slated to begin on November 25th. One option that he floated a few weeks back was hosting a multi-team event at Thompson Boling Arena in Knoxville.

According to a report from the Knoxville News Sentinel, that may be the exact route Tennessee takes.

The Vols are in the process of finalizing a multi-team event at with Charlotte and VCU at Thompson-Boling Arena, UT spokesperson Tom Satkowiak confirmed to Knox News on Friday. The event is expected to start Nov. 25 and each team will play two games.

Rick Barnes said that Tennessee has had its scheduled nearly finalized a couple of times now, but with ESPN pulling the plug on several tournaments, that changed everything a forced teams to get creative ahead of conference play.

Tennessee is still working on a game with Gonzaga, but nothing has been finalized at this point.

So it sounds like you can count on games against VCU and Charlotte for now. A Kansas matchup in the Big 12/SEC challenge has been confirmed. Outside of that, we’re not too sure.