FanHouse JajuanSmith

This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted RBK of the BruceBall Blog to break down the Tennessee Volunteers.

The Tennessee Vols are coming off of back-to-back Sweet Sixteen appearances under Coach Bruce Pearl, and last season's 31 wins were tops in the program's history. Tennessee fans were disappointed in the finish, hoping that the 2007-2008 Volunteers would be the first ever to break through to the Elite Eight. It was not meant to be, and this year's Vols appear to be in somewhat of a transition mode after the loss of three senior guards including the SEC's all-time three-point shot leader, Chris Lofton.

The 15 seed American University Eagles played about 35 minutes of tough, aggressive basketball and at times appeared poised to pull off one of the greatest upsets in NCAA Tournament history today, but 2-seed Tennessee was ultimately too much, winning a 72-57 game that was much closer than that score would indicate.

The game wasn't a classic like last night's Duke-Belmont game, but it had its moments, and for much of the early portion of the game it was American, not Tennessee, that looked like it had come to play. Most impressive was American's rebounding edge of 37-25.

It was still a one-possession game, with Tennessee up 54-51, with less than five minutes to play, but when Tennessee needed big shots, it got them. JaJuan Smith, in particular, was impressive, making 4-of-8 from three-point range.

Next up for Tennessee will be the Butler-South Alabama winner. The Volunteers will be favored, but they'll need a better effort than they put up today against American.