KNOXVILLE - Bruce Pearl was blunt in his assessment of his team's lack of leadership following Saturday's deflating home loss to Mississippi State.
The Tennessee basketball coach's top two scorers had varying responses to the direct comments of their coach.
"I kind of agree with Coach," freshman forward Tobias Harris said. "I feel like we all kind of chime in and we all kind of do it in our own type of way, which we all respect as players."
Scotty Hopson, who leads the Volunteers (17-12, 7-7 Southeastern Conference) with 19.6 points per SEC game, has said on multiple occasions he views himself as a team leader.
"Maybe he's coming at me, maybe he's challenging me," Hopson said. "When he challenges me, I always step back up and embrace the challenge, and I'm going to do whatever I can to try to help this team be successful.
"I think he wants me as far as a leader just to do more on the basketball floor as far as playing to win and getting other guys into the game."
UT enters the final week of the regular season in the fifth spot in the SEC East, a game back of Georgia and Kentucky for third and two games back of Vanderbilt for second and a first-round bye in next week's conference tournament in Atlanta.
Based on Pearl's comments on his team's lack of leadership, they'll be doing some soul-searching between now and the Thursday's trip to South Carolina (14-13, 5-9).
"We are not getting good leadership from within the team," Pearl said. "That's just a fact. We have some good individuals, some really good kids. We have a lot of parity. We have a lot of guys who aren't much different or better than one another.
"Scotty and Tobias are significantly better than the guys playing behind them. Melvin [Goins] is significantly better than the backup point guard."
Part of Harris' advanced maturity for a freshman is his steady demeanor, but he said that wouldn't stop him from trying to fill the void.
"I try to just go out there and lead by example and get guys going," said Harris, who's averaging 13.7 points and 8.2 boards per league game. "I'm not one of the guys to really speak up and say a lot to the team.
"I'm a freshman, but I'll tell them when they're not doing good and I'll tell them when they're doing good. I just try to be a low-key guy, but leadership's just got show up somehow, somewhere, and if I've got to be a leader on this team, I wouldn't mind it all."
Said Hopson: "I think [Pearl's] challenging us. He stepped up and challenged me, and I bounced back as a player and as a person, so I think he's just challenging us as a team.
"That's something we need. He needs to go at each and every one of us and challenge us individually or as a whole and say, 'What are y'all going to do? The time is now.' We've got to step up. We're the team that's out there; they're just putting us in position to be successful. We've got to ultimately go out there and do it."