KNOXVILLE - After a hot-shooting Tennessee dismantled Ole Miss 94-61 on Feb. 3, Rick Barnes acknowledged the second-half was likely the best half his Volunteers had played all season.
"I know we go back down there, and it will be a whole different ball game," Barnes said afterwards.
Three weeks later, the No. 19 Volunteers (20-7, 10-5 SEC) are gearing up to face an Ole Miss team that is coming off arguably its best win of the year with interim coach Tony Madlock now in charge.
The Rebels (12-16, 5-10) won 90-87 in overtime at Missouri on Tuesday in their first game since veteran coach Andy Kennedy's resignation. The second game of the Madlock era is Saturday at 1 p.m. Eastern, when the Rebels host Tennessee.
"I just know this time of year, that mindset is as important as anything," Barnes said. "After watching what they did against Missouri, they have a pretty good mindset right now."
Tennessee struggled to score in the first half of the first meeting against a trapping zone by Ole Miss. The Vols eventually figured it out and ran away with the game by shooting 71.4 percent in the second half.
Barnes did not see anything dramatically different about Ole Miss' style of play against Missouri with Madlock calling the shots instead of Kennedy. The Rebels forced 21 turnovers while ending a seven-game losing streak.
"They've had a couple of days here where they could add some things as teams do this time of year," Barnes said. "Some teams do keep tweaking it. We've got to be ready for what they've done pretty much all year long, changing defenses, what they do offensively and also be ready for some adjustments."
Yahoo! report
Documents that are part of a federal probe into the underbelly of college basketball were published by Yahoo! Sports on Friday implicating at least 20 Division 1 programs in potential NCAA rules violations related to a sports agency allegedly paying players.
Players at Kentucky, Alabama and Barnes' former school, Texas, were implicated in the documents as having received payments by the report.
"I've been doing this a long time, so I'm not surprised by any of it," Barnes said. "I don't know what all is in the report. We could sit here and talk for days on end about all the things that have gone on in college basketball. Again, I'm not surprised by it."
Coach of the year semifinalist
Barnes was named one of 10 semifinalists for the Naismith Coach of the Year award on Friday. Four finalists will be announced March 15, and the winner will be announced April 1 during the Final Four in San Antonio.
"No, no, no. I don't. No," Barnes said when asked if he'd thought any about in contention for the award. "I haven't thought anything about it, don't know anything about it and really don't care anything about it."
Barnes, in his third-year at Tennessee, has taken a program picked to finish 13th in the SEC to 20 wins with three games still remaining in the regular season.
Other semifinalists for the Coach of The Year award include Texas Tech's Chris Beard, Virginia's Tony Bennett, Clemson's Brad Brownell, Cincinnati's Mick Cronin, Ohio State's Chris Holtmann, Xavier's Chris Mack, Purdue's Matt Painter, Auburn's Bruce Pearl and Villanova's Jay Wright.
Injury update
Freshman forward Derrick Walker, who did not play against Florida because of an ankle injury, worked through agility drills on the side with a strength coach at the beginning Thursday's practice before joining the team as a limited participant in five-on-five drills.