Tennessee basketball announces neutral-site game with North Carolina State

Tennessee basketball on Wednesday announced it will play a neutral-site game in San Antonio on December 16th. The game, played at the AT&T Center, the home of the San Antonio Spurs, in partnership with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and its newly branded Hall of Fame Series.

The game will be part of a doubleheader that also features a women’s basketball game between Baylor vs. Miami.

“Our program has participated in several Hall of Fame events in recent years, and they have always been wonderful experiences for our team,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said. “We expect the same caliber of experience when we travel to San Antonio—a great city that knows and loves basketball—to test ourselves against a really talented and well-coached NC State program.

“Our associate head coach, Justin Gainey, is an NC State grad and was a great point guard for the Wolfpack under Herb Sendek. And growing up in Hickory, North Carolina, I’m very familiar with NC State’s rich basketball history.”

Other non-conference opponents that have been announced or reported so far include a road game at Wisconsin and home games with Wofford and Illinois.

Tennessee goes to Wisconsin on November 10 at the Kohl Center in Madison and willl reportedly host Wofford at Thompson-Boling Arena on December 14, just two days before the neutral-site game against NC State.

Kevin Keatts led the Wolfpack to 23 wins and an appearance in the NCAA Tournament last season. NC State lost to Elite Eight-bound Creighton 72-63 in the first round. Tennessee beat NC State 67-58 in the Battle 4 Atlantis in November 2017, the Wolfpack’s first season under Keatts.

NC State joins Wisconsin and Illinois as Tennessee’s notable non-conference games

Tennessee will play three games in the Maui Invitational against a field that includes Gonzaga, Kansas, Marquette, Purdue, Syracuse and UCLA. The bracket for the tournament has not yet been announced.

Illinois will come to Knoxville on December 9, the start of a home-and-home series that will continue at Illinois in 2024-25. The Vols are also expected to play on the road in November in the ACC-SEC Challenge.

Tennessee will scrimmage at Michigan State in October, after the Spartans made the trip for the closed-scrimmage in Knoxville last October. Barnes said during Big Orange Caravan in April that the Vols have not yet decided what they’ll do for an exhibition game.

Last season Tennessee played Gonzaga in a televised exhibition game with proceeds going to charity.

“Our schedule we play,” Barnes said during the Big Orange Caravan tour, “we’ll start the season with a scrimmage against Michigan State up there. Then we’ll talk about what we want to do after that with an exhibition game or another one of the games where we can maybe do a charity game.

“Then Maui and all that. It’s going to help these young guys early.”

Vols to play three exhibition games during 10-day trip to Italy

Tennessee announced on last week it will play three exhibition games during a 10-day tour through Italy in early August. The Vols will play two games against the Lithuanian U21 National Team and another game against A.S. Stella Azzura.

The two games against the Lithuanian team will be August 4 and 5 in Florence. The game against A.S. Stella Azzura is August 7 in Rome. The trip starts in the Lake Como area, before Tennessee busses to Florence and later trains to Rome.

Video of the three exhibition games cane be streamed through FloSports, a subscription video service. Tennessee fans can purchase a one-month subscription to see the game.

Tennessee arrives in Italy July 31 and will stay through August 9. The trip will include a boat tour of Lake Como, a tour of the Florence Cathedral as well as sight-seeing at the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, the Colosseum and Vatican City.