Tennessee’s final exhibition tune-up comes with a real marquee feel.
The Volunteers will face Duke on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, with tipoff set for 7:00 PM EDT at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. It’s the last exhibition before Tennessee’s season begins in the first week of November, and fans will actually have a few ways to catch it.
The game will air on the ACC Network, and it will also be available to stream on the ESPN App. For those following along in real time, live updates will be available on Vols on SI.
Rick Barnes said the exhibition already gave his team a useful look at where it stands, and he didn’t sugarcoat the teaching points.
“I think everything’s good. I mean, we know that we’ve got a lot to learn just by being out and playing against somebody else, and there were some things in the first half that were good.
We should have scored more points than we did in the first half. The second half, it really got down to when we hit some adversity, we just stopped altogether playing defense and rebounding, just think we’re gonna shoot the ball and think that’s gonna be good enough.
We knew that would rear its head at some point in time; we knew that."
Barnes said those moments are exactly why these games matter.
"That’s why I love these exhibition games, because you get a chance to let those things happen. And then, obviously, we’ve got a good group of guys.
They wanna learn, but they don’t know what they don’t know right now. There’s some elementary things that we feel like that they should, but that’s not their fault, because we’re learning a whole new system and some of that we’ve got to do better jobs as coaches to teach them some of these things."
He also pointed to the status of a couple of players as Tennessee continues sorting through pieces.
"But their attitudes have been good. I know they wanna be a good basketball team.
But we haven’t been able to put the whole team together yet. Obviously, with Tyler (Lundblade), I don’t think he’ll play again tomorrow, but he’s making progress.
And Jalen (Washington’s) status, we don’t know. But with that, we’re still trying to figure out a lot of things with this group.
But we will figure it out,” Barnes said.
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The key, as always, starts up front. If Tennessee can hold up in pass protection, George MacIntyres reads should come easier, and the rest of the offense will have a chance to do its part as receivers and backs work into the right spots. The opportunity is there, but it only matters if the Vols can keep the pocket clean long enough to make South Carolina pay for what it has been giving up. [Read more 🡒]