KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The University of Tennessee men’s basketball team will face Virginia in its first game of the newly-named Continental Tire Baha Mar Championship, as announced Friday morning by BdG Sports.
The Volunteers and Cavaliers will tip off Nov. 21 at 9:30 p.m., following the preceding 7 p.m. matchup between Baylor and St. John’s. Action will take place at the Baha Mar Convention, Arts & Entertainment Center, located on the grounds of the stunning Baha Mar resort in Nassau, Bahamas.
“We are excited for the chance to take on an elite program like Virginia to begin play at Baha Mar,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said. “Whether we meet Baylor or St. John’s in our next game, it will be a second major challenge in as many days against a tremendous team with a top-notch coach. This event will be a great opportunity for our team to face big-time competition in a tournament setting at a beautiful location.”
The winners of the first-round affairs meet the next day, Nov. 22, in the title game at 9:30 p.m., while the losers square off beforehand in the consolation affair at 7 p.m. The entire tournament will be televised on CBS Sports Network.
A limited number of VIP packages and general admission tickets for all games of the Continental Tire Baha Mar Championship remain on sale online at bahamarhoops.com.
This is the first time Tennessee is playing in the Continental Tire Baha Mar Championship, which began in 2021, but it is 7-2 all-time in the Bahamas. All nine of those games came in the acclaimed Battle 4 Atlantis, which the Volunteers won in 2022 by knocking off Butler, USC and third-ranked Kansas on back-to-back-to-back days. Tennessee also played in the Bahamas in 2017 and 2013, posting a 7-1 record in its last eight games there, with four straight victories.
The Volunteers own a 5-8 all-time record against Virginia, but the teams have not met in almost 11 years, dating back to an 87-52 Tennessee home win on Dec. 30, 2013.
Over the 13 games in the series, Tennessee is 3-0 at home, 1-5 on the road and 1-3 at neutral sites. The last neutral-site contest came on March 18, 2007, in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32, with the Volunteers registering a 77-74 victory to reach the Sweet 16.
Tennessee senior forward Igor Miličić Jr., in his first year with the Volunteers, began his college career at Virginia. He played for the Cavaliers in 2021-22 before transferring to Charlotte, where he initially played for two seasons, 2022-24. In his first season with the 49ers, Miličić’s head coach was Ron Sanchez, who is now the associate head coach at Virginia.
Virginia, which has appeared in nine of the last 10 NCAA Tournaments and won the national title in 2018-19, is the second of four ACC teams Tennessee will meet within the first nine games of the 2024-25 season. The Volunteers play on the road Nov. 9 at Louisville, host Syracuse in an SEC/ACC Challenge clash Dec. 3 and face Miami in a Dec. 10 matchup in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Tennessee has never played Baylor, while it is 3-5 all-time against St. John’s. The lone meeting in the last 40-plus years between the Volunteers and Red Storm came on Nov. 24, 2001, at the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, Alaska, where St. John’s logged a 69-55 victory. That is the only neutral-site contest between the two teams, while Tennessee is 2-0 at home and 1-4 on the road.
The four head coaches in the event—Barnes, Tony Bennett of Virginia, Scott Drew of Baylor and Rick Pitino of St. John’s—own greater than 2,500 combined victories and over 115 years of head coaching experience.
To keep up with the University of Tennessee men’s basketball team on social media, follow @Vol_Hoops on Instagram and X/Twitter, as well as /tennesseebasketball on Facebook.
