2025-26 Tennessee men's basketball nonconference schedule
Barnes guided the Vols to back-to-back NCAA Tournament Elite Eight appearances from 2024-25.
Tennessee will open its 2025-26 basketball season on Nov. 3 versus Mercer at Food City Center.
"Each year, we work to create a nonconference schedule that best sets our team up for success and prepares us for SEC competition,' Barnes said. 'We feel we have once again done just that. In addition to four tough games we'll get on planes for, we look forward to playing nine here in the Volunteer state, including eight on our home court, in front of our incredible fans.'
Tennessee released its 2025-26 nonconference basketball schedule and is listed below.
2025-26 Tennessee men's basketball nonconference schedule
Nov. 3 – Mercer
Nov. 9 – Northern Kentucky
Nov. 12 – North Florida
Nov. 17 – Rice
Nov. 20 – Tennessee State
Nov. 24 – vs. Rutgers (Players Era Men's Championship – Las Vegas, Nevada)
Nov. 25 – vs. Houston (Players Era Men's Championship – Las Vegas, Nevada)
Nov. 26-27 – vs. TBD (Players Era Men's Championship – Las Vegas, Nevada)
Dec. 2 – at Syracuse (ACC/SEC Challenge)
Dec. 6 – vs. Illinois (Nashville, Tennessee)
Dec. 16 – Louisville
Dec. 21 – Gardner-Webb
Dec. 30 – South Carolina State
Follow Vols Wire on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
21 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Construction halted at new Tennessee Titans Stadium after noose found at site
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Construction on a new enclosed stadium for the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, Tennessee, has been halted after a noose was found at the construction site. Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Kristin Mumford said in an email on Friday that they are aware and investigating. The Tennessee Builders Alliance, a joint venture partnership on the stadium, said it suspended construction at the site after the 'racist and hateful' symbol was discovered this week. 'We are requiring additional antibias training for every person on site, and work will resume only after a site-wide stand-down focused on inclusion and respect,' a statement from the alliance reads. The alliance has launched an investigation and is offering a reward for information leading to the identification of those responsible. 'We are outraged and deeply saddened by this act,' the alliance's statement says. 'We are working in close partnership with our client, trade partners, and unions to ensure every worker understands that racism and hate have no place here. Everyone deserves to feel safe, welcomed, and treated with respect and dignity.' Tennessee broke ground on the new stadium in February 2024 and expects construction to be complete by February 2027, providing more than enough time for the Titans to move next door from their current open-air stadium for the 2027 NFL season. The Titans report to fall camp at a practice facility in Nashville next Tuesday.
Fox Sports
an hour ago
- Fox Sports
Inside Kirby Smart's Formula for Success: Recruit the Best and Play Everyone
Kirby Smart and his Georgia Bulldogs run the SEC. Alabama fans hate to hear it. LSU fans would like to dispute it. Texas would like us to just wait awhile. But since Kirby Smart first reached the national title game in 2018, his program has made the College Football Playoff four times in eight years and won two national championships. The only SEC coach to put together a better run than that is Nick Saban, and he doesn't coach anymore. When people were touting Kalen DeBoer's coaching record before arriving as the successor to Saban at Alabama (104-12), many seemed to forget Smart had been winning from the moment he arrived to coach one of the most storied programs in the deepest league in the sport. Consider this: Smart is 105-19 as a head coach, 53-5 over the past five years, and had already won the same number of national titles as all 11 coaches combined heading into last year's College Football Playoff. The only coach keeping pace with Smart is Dabo Swinney, whose Clemson program is the closest thing to an SEC team outside the league. Smart is the best this league has to offer, and all roads run through Athens, Georgia. The defending SEC champions haven't lost a game at home in six years, when South Carolina coach Will Muschamps made off with part of the hedges between his teeth on the way back to Columbia. That was so long ago that Muschamp has been on staff at Georgia for five years. The way that Smart has reestablished Georgia as one of the most dominant programs in the country is by using the strategy everyone else will be forced to employ in this new era of roster caps, revenue sharing and annual turnover: Recruit the best and play everyone. Georgia does not produce Heisman winners — the Bulldogs have only two in their rich football history (Frank Sinkwich and Herschel Walker). The program does not produce 1,000-yard receivers — just one all-time (Terrence Edwards)— and it hasn't produced a 1,000-yard rusher since 2019 (D'Andre Swift). Yet Georgia puts trophies in the cabinet and first-round picks into the NFL Draft, totaling 11 since 2021. Despite having a 2025 roster that is mostly made up of underclassmen, 54% according to Smart, Georgia expects to defend its SEC title and return to the CFP because most of those players, many of whom are four and five-star recruits, played significant football in 2024 and will be asked to play significant snaps again this season as young players. "We play a lot of players," Smart said this week at SEC Media Days. "I think we had the third or fourth most players over 100 snaps. So, if you come to Georgia, you expect to play. We want to give you an opportunity to play, so we get a lot of those guys reps and grow them, and we'll see where we are in fall camp at that position." Smart learned that philosophy from Saban, who, in his last year as head coach at Alabama, started a true freshman at safety: Caleb Downs. Downs led the 2023 Crimson Tide in tackles and broke a 40-year record for tackles in a season by a freshman with 107. When Saban retired, Downs transferred to Ohio State and was one of the top defenders in the country, staring for the defending national champions. It's not just identifying talent that makes Smart so good in this day and age. There are 30-plus five-star prospects coming out of high school every year, and not all of them go to Georgia. It's Smart's ability to identify the five to seven that fit his program's needs and the program culture. "You can say what you want, but there are more people in college football today, especially in the SEC, that are comfortable with where they are," Smart said. "This is a pretty good life. I'm earning 200K a year. I'm very comfortable. But you don't reach your goals being comfortable." The rest of the SEC is going to have to take notes and follow Smart's path by paying players not just with money, but with the privilege of playing early and often. Perhaps they won't create the kind of stats that lead to media members yelling their names on a regular basis, but they will develop into NFL-caliber players who make it to their second NFL contract, and they will play for championships. Nothing in college football is assured. Nothing in college football is without risk. Smart has coached through the creation of the transfer portal, the decision to allow players to play immediately after transferring within the FBS, the advent of NIL, and now, the beginning of revenue-sharing with players. None of this has stopped him or Georgia from doing what it must do to maintain its presence atop the deepest league in football. And yes, Kirby Smart is just fine with that. RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The Number One College Football Show." Follow him at @RJ_Young . Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! FOLLOW Follow your favorites to personalize your FOX Sports experience College Football recommended Item 1 of 3 Get more from the College Football Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
Fox Sports
an hour ago
- Fox Sports
Texas Picked to Win 2025 SEC Championship With Arch Manning at QB
Texas, with Heisman Trophy candidate Arch Manning set to take over as starting quarterback, is the preseason pick to win the SEC championship. The Longhorns received 96 of the 204 votes cast from media members covering the SEC media days this week to be crowned SEC champion on Dec. 6 in Atlanta at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Georgia, with 44 votes, received the second-most votes. If that scenario plays out, it would mean a rematch of the 2024 SEC Championship Game, which Georgia won in an overtime thriller. The SEC title game pits the two teams with the best regular-season conference record against one another. Alabama was third with 29 votes, while LSU got 20. South Carolina was next with five, while Oklahoma received three and Vanderbilt and Florida each got two votes. Tennessee, Ole Miss and Auburn each received one vote. Since 1992, only 10 times has the predicted champion in the preseason poll gone on to win the SEC championship. The 2024 SEC title game averaged 16.6 million viewers, the fourth-largest audience on record for the game. The OT win for Georgia, which peaked with 19.7 million viewers, delivered the largest audience of the college football season. Reporting by The Associated Press. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! FOLLOW Follow your favorites to personalize your FOX Sports experience College Football Texas Longhorns recommended Item 1 of 3 Get more from the College Football Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more in this topic
