It’s still early in the college basketball season — conference play is only just starting — but while getting hot right before the NCAA Tournament matters, teams have to succeed in January in order to make it to the tournament in the first place. It might not be the absolute most pivotal stretch of the season, but early conference play can still help separate the contenders from the pretenders.
In particular, the next week-plus will help determine whether Texas is a contender or a pretender. The Longhorns, who are currently 9-5 (0-1 SEC), will face three consecutive ranked opponents. Their difficult slate begins tonight with a 9 p.m. ET clash against No. 21 Tennessee at the Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville. The Volunteers are 10-4 (0-1 SEC).
Tennessee is a 10.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-625 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 151.5. Texas is +455 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s pivotal clash of orange teams.
Texas vs. Tennessee (9:00 p.m. ET)
Unlike Texas, the Volunteers have had a signature win this season, when they edged out No. 3 Houston on November 25 in a 76-73 thriller to move to 7-0 for the season. However, Tennessee has slowed down since then, losing three straight — including two to non-ranked opponents — and it opened SEC play with an 86-75 defeat against No. 18 Arkansas on Saturday. It’s hard to judge too much from some of the Volunteers’ more lopsided victories, such as a 105-54 victory over South Carolina State, but KenPom, which takes strength of schedule into consideration, suggests that Tennessee is the 16th-best team in the country.
It’s easy to see why, given the Volunteers’ talent-laden roster. Senior Ja’Kobi Gillespie leads the team with 17.6 points and 5.7 assists per game, but he’s not the headliner. That would be Nate Ament, a projected top-five pick in next summer’s draft who ranks second on the team with 15.2 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. Ament is still a fairly raw prospect, posting just 40-28-74 shooting splits, but he’s had plenty of highs, including a 23-point performance in his second collegiate game against Northern Kentucky on November 8. They’re flanked inside by senior Felix Okpara, who’s tied for 49th in the country in blocks. With Ament’s length, Gillespie’s active hands, and Okpara’s rim protection, it’s not a surprise that Tennessee ranks 12th in opponent-adjusted defensive rating, per KenPom.
The advanced numbers are less favorable to the Longhorns, who rank just 52nd in opponent-adjusted net rating by KenPom’s standards. In part, it’s a matter of Texas’ weak out-of-conference schedule, which is the 61st-weakest among the 365 teams in KenPom’s database. So far this season, the Longhorns have only faced three ranked opponents, and they lost to both No. 6 Duke and No. 5 Connecticut by double-digit points. A win over No. 23 North Carolina State is nice, but KenPom isn’t so impressed either with NC State or with Mississippi State, which handed Texas an overtime defeat in its SEC opener.
The Longhorns’ clear leading man is Dailyn Swain, a Xavier transfer who leads the team in points (16.4), rebounds (7.4), assists (3.4), and steals (1.7) per game. Lithuanian center Matas Vokietaitis is a solid second option, averaging 16.1 points and 6.6 boards per game. As talented as those players are, though, Swain is merely projected to be a second-round pick in the 2026 NBA Draft and Vokietaitis isn’t projected to be drafted at all, so there’s definitely somewhat of a gap in raw talent between the two teams’ leading options. Texas’ rebounders also aren’t quite as dominant as the Volunteers’, as it ranks 13th in the nation in rebound margin to Tennessee’s fifth, and the Volunteers also shoot marginally better from deep.
With the Longhorns a more upperclassman-led team and Tennessee putting a lot of its offensive faith in the young Ament, this game could come down to how the 19-year-old plays. There’s reason to believe that he could be sharp: his only two single-digit scoring performances in which he played at least half the game came against the eighth- and 21st-ranked defenses, and his two 20-plus-point efforts came against No. 192 Northern Kentucky and No. 7 Kansas. At 111th in defensive rating, Texas is closer to Northern Kentucky than it is to Houston.
