COLUMBUS, Ohio — Admiral Schofield clutched a cardboard "Power T" and smiled while walking past reporters in the Nationwide Arena tunnel on Sunday. Tennessee, the 2-seed in the South Region, had built a 25-point lead, lost it, then reset in overtime to pull out an 83-77 victory against 10-seed Iowa in the second round of the NCAA Tournament for a trip to the Sweet 16.
Schofield issued an informal apology to Tennessee fans.
"Sorry to make you all panic,” Schofield said as he strolled by. “Go Vols."
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Willy Wonka once said, "You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about." The Volunteers are the candy man's nonsensical statement personified: a team that toggles between greatness and disaster more than perhaps any other team left in the field. That led to an emotional weekend that Vols point guard Jordan Bone described with two emotions.
Relief and excitement.
"It means everything, but it doesn’t stop here," he said. "We put everything here behind us and get ready for our next opponent."
They might be the only ones. Tennessee entered the tournament still answering questions about last weekend's loss to Auburn in the SEC championship game, and last year's second-round loss to Loyola. The win against the Hawkeyes neither confirmed nor denied any of those assessments.
The Volunteers head to the South Regional semifinal with a 31-5 record against 3-seed Purdue (25-9), the next weight class up in the Big Ten. Tennessee can handle that — but then again, how can anybody be sure, based on what happened in Columbus?
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Tennessee's starting five came to the podium together on Thursday and fielded more questions about last year's 63-62 loss to Loyola — which ignited the Ramblers' Final Four run and made Sister Jean a national celebrity — than Friday's first-round game against 15-seed Colgate, the next would-be Cinderella.
The Vols also closed the SEC Tournament with a self-destructive 84-64 loss to Auburn and former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl on March 17.
"You can't change what got you here," Schofield said. "I mean, just because you lose doesn't mean what you did was the wrong thing as far as process-wise. It just means that you didn't execute in the moment."
Schofield spoke at length about a desire to continue that process with teammates in the film room, hotel room and on the court. This was a "business trip."
"We're here to accomplish our main goal, and that's to win a national championship," Schofield said. "But you can't do that without winning the first game and the game after that. We have to take it step-by-step and understanding that this process is just like any other process. There are levels to it. There are steps to it. We've just got to understand that consistency and consistent buy-in and lock-in to the game plan and to each other is what's going to get it done this year."
Schofield walked off the podium leaning on All-American forward Grant Williams, who laughed as Tennessee coach Rick Barnes followed up the steps.
Barnes came into the tournament with the same-as-usual-questions about his track record. He was preparing for his 24th NCAA Tournament across stops at Providence, Clemson, Texas and Tennessee. All those tournament trips, however, amounted to just six Sweet 16 appearances and one Final Four, in 2003.
Tennessee has one Elite Eight appearance in school history. Would Barnes be able to add another?
"I think the key is to be who you are and what's got your team here and players be that," Barnes said. "I think we all want to come into this tournament with energy. You want to have the legs that you need to compete, the way you'll have to compete each possession. There's no doubt early in my career, I think, I probably got my team a little bit too uptight at times."
Tennessee was anything but early against Colgate. The Vols led the Raiders 42-30 at halftime in what appeared to be the next run-of-the-mill 2-15 blowout.
Or so they thought.
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When the clock malfunctioned after Colgate’s Will Rayman hit a to layup cut Tennessee's lead to 44-38 with 16:39 remaining, it looked like the Raiders might have a chance. Five different Colgate players hit 3-pointers in the second half, and audible gasps accompanied each Raiders heave. Tucker Richardson would add another one, resulting in a Raiders 52-50 lead with 11:37 remaining. Colgate guard Jordan Burns was in the middle of a 32-point performance that included eight 3-pointers.
Schofield, however, was doing the math.
"Everybody's shooting percentage goes up by 10 percent in March," Schofield said afterward. "It seems like everything starts falling. Give them credit. They shot a lot of 3s and made a lot of them."
This upset bid turned, however, when Bone knocked down a 3-pointer with 4:46 left after a feed from Williams. Bone exhaled and dropped his shoulders while turning to the other side of the court.
That was a moment of relief.
MORE: Admiral rights the ship against Colgate
Schofield flipped the script with three straight 3-pointers in the final five minutes that gave the Vols a 77-70 victory. Despite the scare, Tennessee players insisted this situation wasn't new. Williams said there was no panic in the team huddles.
"We've been in this situation before," Williams said. "We've dealt with teams making runs and understand teams are going to make runs and you have to combat that. Just because you're 16 or 20 — look at Auburn when they were playing New Mexico State — they were up 13 or something like that and they made that run."
"We've been in this situation so many times," Schofield repeated. "We've been in situations with Kentucky. We've been in situations with Villanova where we didn't come out on top. We've been up against Purdue and a lot of teams around the country."
Tennessee was in a one-of-a-kind-situation against Iowa in the second round Sunday.
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It looked easy early. Schofield picked up where he left off with two quick 3-pointers in a perfect start against Iowa. Six different Tennessee players scored on 8-of-12 shooting.
Tennessee led 20-9 with 14:28 remaining in the first half, and the full-court press continued.
Bone and Lamonte Turner helped the Vols up the tempo against Iowa, and the took advantage in transition to push the lead to 20 points. Schofield said, "Nice call" to the official after being called for a touch foul. He even buried a 3-pointer that would not count and turned to the crowd and screamed, "Wooo!"
Tennessee pushed that lead to 44-19 on another Schofield with 4:22 left in the first half. That 25-point lead, though, almost became a punchline.
"We kind of made some silly mistakes, but we didn't get rattled," Bone said. "We didn't get away from our game plan. We made a couple errors here and there, but toward the end we stayed locked in and got the job done."
That's one way to describe what unfolded. The other would be Iowa almost pulled off the unthinkable, matching BYU’s 25-point comeback over Iona in 2012 for the biggest comeback in NCAA Tournament history.
Iowa's Tyler Cook opened the second half with nine straight points, including a one-handed dunk on Schofield. Tennessee's lead evaporated one segment at a time. The Hawkeyes tied the score at 67 with 2:39 remaining when Turner was called for a questionable foul on a 3-point shot by Jordan Bohannon.
How is this a foul on Lamonte Turner lol these refs love the lower seeds this tourney pic.twitter.com/kCkvVVdRlr
— BettorIQ (@BettorIQ) March 24, 2019
Turner let his mind wander briefly to the thought of blowing a 25-point lead in a tournament game.
"I honestly was thinking that during the game," Turner said with a laugh. "I'm like, 'Yeah, we can't lose this game.'"
Turner answered with a 3-pointer of his own on the ensuing possession. The Vols led by two in the final minute, and that's when Schofield launched another 3-pointer early in the shot clock. It missed, and Iowa capitalized to tie the score on two free throws by Jordan Weiskamp.
Tennessee had the final shot, but Bone missed a 3-pointer. This was a flashback to the loss to Loyola last season. The Vols were headed toward another one of those situations in overtime.
"We were just like, 'Hey, it's a game now. You’ve got to play. You’ve got to love these moments," Williams said. "As a competitor, I don't speak for everybody else, but I wouldn't want it other way."
If you can't believe that, then good luck believing what unfolded next.
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The events surrounding the last few seconds of regulation and overtime resulted in the most frequent question asked in Barnes' postgame news conference. Schofield, the player who said he wasn’t afraid to be the "make-or-miss guy" in the clutch against Colgate, also wasn’t afraid to take a seat on the bench in favor of Kyle Richardson. In fact, Schofield asked Barnes to be taken out of the game.
This was a player decision. Well, players' decision.
"They've been together a lot," Barnes said. "They were talking during the timeout. And we actually at one time put Admiral back in the game in regulation. But he said, 'Coach, leave Kyle in the game. We have to have him to rebound the ball for us.'"
Bone confirmed that afterward.
"It was a big-time move by him," he said. "Admiral wants to be in the game, but he went outside himself and talked to coach and said, 'We need Kyle in the game.' That was a big-time move by him."
MORE: Takeaways from Tennessee's escape from Iowa
Tennessee opened overtime with a 7-0 run — the highlight coming when Williams busted Iowa's zone with a pass to Bone, who buried a 3-pointer and screamed "Yeah!" before pointing back to Williams.
That was a moment of excitement.
Williams would squash another Iowa comeback when he stripped Cook for a steal that preserved that cushion in the final minute. Williams had four fouls and knew it, but he also had a feeling Cook would turn left and try to dunk over him.
"I'm glad I got all ball and no hands because that could have gone the other way," he said.
Only it didn't. Tennessee advanced to the Sweet 16. Schofield and Williams embraced at halfcourt. "Rocky Top" blared, and Tennessee avoided becoming a trivia question by making the clutch plays when it mattered most.
What should we think about that?
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The Volunteers celebrated in the locker room afterward. Williams brought everyone's name tags from the news conferences to share and said, "If y'all don't keep them, I will."
"I feel like a fifth grader that just ate some Skittles," Williams said. "Run around the room like I'm Superman with a cape on his back. That's how I'm feeling. I'm ready to go right now."
It's that kind of moment for the program. The Vols have made the Sweet 16 eight times, and they are looking for that first Elite Eight appearance since 2010. Tennessee is still searching for that Final Four moment — the kind that validates a program.
"This is a confidence-builder for our toughness," Schofield said. "It shows that adversity is going to hit. How do you respond? We responded at a great rate today. It's just really about winning."
After all, the SEC had a quarter of the Sweet 16 field reserved, second only to the ACC. Tennessee joins Kentucky, Auburn and LSU: all programs with different sets of questions but all capable of making the Final Four.
Tennessee still has the most question marks. Are they the team that can dominate and make a Final Four? Or will they shrink back in the Sweet 16 limelight against a Purdue team that usually faces this same question? At the very least, the Vols put away, once and for all, the questions that came with last year’s Loyola loss.
It's a moment, Barnes said, that traces back to 2016-17 season — the last time Tennessee did not make the tournament.
"They actually said they thought that was the turning point in our program," Barnes said. "So the end of last year, when we lost, a tough loss to Loyola, I went back and reminded those guys, you guys said that that was the best thing we did, so do we need to do it again.
"They said, 'Let us take care of it,'" he said. "They really did.”
Bone was asked how it must have felt to be a fan watching that game with the 25-point lead. Teammate Brad Woodson laughed. Both are Tennessee natives. They understand the gravity of what those fans went through on Sunday. That is the relief and excitement that comes with advancing to the third round of the tournament.
Bone, however, did not issue an apology. Instead, he urged Tennessee fans to get ready for the next game.
"I can only imagine how those people felt," Bone said. "It was worth it. We came out with the win. No need to have a heart attack. We're moving forward to the Sweet 16."
