Dwight Perry and Wofford couldn't beat Tennessee, but he has a huge fan in Rick Barnes

Wofford couldn’t pull off the upset against Tennessee, but Terriers’ head coach Dwight Perry, a former Kentucky Wildcat, gained even more respect from one of the sports’ best.

The 2-seeded Volunteers were able to fend off 15-seeded Wofford’s many comeback attempts Thursday night in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament, coming away with a 77-62 win in Rupp Arena. Tennessee entered as a massive favorite and the final score alone would hint that this game wasn’t all that close, but that was far from the truth.

Even after Tennessee jumped out to an early 22-8 lead, Wofford punched back. It was a nine-point game at halftime. The Vols could have easily pushed toward a 20-point lead in the second half, but Wofford never wavered. Had Chaz Lanier not caught fire from mid-range, finishing with 29 points, the Terriers might have had a real chance at making some March Magic. A lengthy scoring at the worst possible time down the stretch did them in for good.

But even if the end result wasn’t what Perry, who was a walk-on at UK from 2006-09, and his team were hoping for, they can take some solace in knowing Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes never once felt comfortable.

“Dwight Perry, I can’t tell you how impressed I am with he and his staff,” Barnes said postgame. “They played hard, they competed, and it was a hard-fought game. Exactly what we thought.

“I know our players have the utmost respect for Wofford coming in. We knew it was going to be a hard-fought game because those guys have much-improved from a year ago. But I just can’t say enough about Wofford and their coaching staff because, again, they were really a tough opponent here in the first round.”

Barnes is familiar with Perry and Wofford, having hosted the Terriers in Knoxville last season. Tennessee won that early-season matchup as well, 82-61, but Barnes witnessed the behind-the-scenes development Perry created within his team during the postseason rematch over a year later. Wofford finished sixth in the Southern Conference regular season standings but caught fire at the right time to win the conference tournament and make the Big Dance.

Perry, only in year three as a head coach, returned seven players from last season’s team, including his top four scorers. They know what it’s like to play Tennessee and other high-major programs. There were no nerves from the side of the underdog.

“It’s always hard to win a game in this tournament, especially when you’re thinking about a team that knows you,” Barnes said. “I mean, I don’t think that Wofford came into this game one bit concerned about us being an SEC team, again, because I watched them come into our building a year ago, and they didn’t flinch and I knew they wouldn’t flinch today.”

Only 37 years old, this won’t be the last NCAA Tournament appearance for Perry. Wofford has improved its win total in all three years he’s been in charge. This was the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2019 and just the sixth ever. The fact he was able to return to Lexington for his first shot at the Big Dance as a coach was a beautiful full-circle moment.

“To be able to experience that anywhere, I think, is something that I don’t take for granted,” Perry said. “To be able to experience it at a place as special as Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, that I was able to grow and mature from a young man into a man, is something that I can’t even really fully put into words.”