UT finishes 13th in Directors’ Cup standings
Published 4:18 pm Thursday, July 7, 2022
- University of Tennessee graduate Candace Parker has been named to her seventh WNBA All-Star Game. UT Athletics photo
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Tennessee Athletics landed at No. 13 in the final 2021-22 LEARFIELD Directors’ Cup national standings, NACDA announced Thursday.
Tennessee Volunteers linebacker Aaron Willis (41) celebrates the Vols’ win over Kentucky Saturday in Lexington. File photo
This is Tennessee’s best Directors’ Cup finish since 2006-07, when it earned its best-ever placement at No. 7. It also snaps a 10-year streak of finishing outside the top 20.
Tennessee was the fourth-best finisher among SEC schools this year—a significant improvement from it’s ninth-place SEC finish a year ago.
In its first full academic year under Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics Danny White, Tennessee secured its first-ever SEC Overall All-Sports Trophy earlier this month. Tennessee also finished first in the SEC Men’s All-Sports standings while earning a second-place finish in the SEC Women’s All-Sports standings.
“Our student-athletes and coaches have a lot to be proud about this year, highlighted by five SEC championships,” White said. “Across the board, we’ve shown significant improvement from recent years. But we can’t be satisfied; 13th place is not our goal. We’re setting our sights higher, and I’m very confident we’re going to keep rising.”
Vols win overall SEC all-sports title
Tennessee in 2021-22 claimed its first SEC Overall All-Sports title, presented by USA Today Network, and the Vols also captured the program’s first SEC Men’s All-Sports title since 2007-08. In the SEC Women’s All-Sports standings, Tennessee finished second behind Florida.
Tennessee was one of only seven Division I programs in the country to make a football bowl game and also qualify for the NCAA Championships in men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball and baseball (joining Arkansas, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, UCLA and Virginia Tech).
Across the nine sports for which the SEC tracks head-to-head win/loss records (and at least 13 teams compete), Tennessee owned the league’s best intraconference win percentage in 2021-22 at .672. The next-best win percentage was .595 (Florida). Those nine sports are football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, softball, men’s tennis, women’s tennis, soccer and volleyball.
Eight Tennessee teams (four men’s and four women’s) finished in the top 16 or advanced to at least the round of 16 in their respective NCAA Championships.
