KNOXVILLE -- It's still two months until the NCAA tournament field is announced, but the various bracket projections that become popular this time of the year are up and running at full strength.
And believe it or not, Tennessee was listed as a No. 9 seed in one of them on Thursday.
Going into the season, the Volunteers, picked to finish 13th in the SEC after having to replace more than 75 percent of its scoring and rebounding from last season's Sweet 16 team, even sniffing the NCAA tournament conversation seemed like a stretch.
Yet after Tennessee knocked off No. 19 Arkansas to add to its December win against then-No. 15 Butler, CBS Sports bracket analyst Jerry Palm has the Vols in the field he updated on Thursday.
When told of his team's unlikely standing, first-year Vols coach Donnie Tyndall shrugged it off.
"I'll say those people, I never believe them when they say bad stuff, and I'll never believe them when they say good stuff," he said before Thursday afternoon's practice. "Everyone has an opinion. Those prognostications and opinions don't mean anything right now. We've got a lot of basketball to be played, and we're worried about Mizzou."
The Vols (10-5, 2-1 SEC) visit Missouri (7-9, 1-2) on Saturday evening in Columbia to start a stretch where they'll play five of eight games away from Knoxville, where they're 8-1 this season.
As odd as it is to see Tennessee in any NCAA tournament conversation, Palm's inclusion of the Vols isn't all that far-fetched given their resume.
Tennessee owns an official RPI of 54, wins against Arkansas (15) and Butler (14) and a top-25 strength-of-schedule ranking, and its worse loss is to Marquette (RPI: 109).
"We still have room to grow and room to get better," guard Kevin Punter said. "For us, I think we're in a pretty good spot and we just want to continue to get better each and every day. We want to continue to grind and grow with each other."
The SEC appears pretty balanced beyond top-ranked Kentucky, which just beat Missouri by 50 in Lexington on Tuesday.
Florida is 9-6 heading into its home game with Auburn tonight, and Arkansas and LSU, two of the more talented teams in the league and likely NCAA tournament teams, have dropped winnable road games already. Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama look like NCAA bubble teams.
In bouncing back from an 18-point loss to the Crimson Tide in which it scored a Thompson-Boling Arena-record low 38 points, Tennessee led Arkansas by 16 points in the second half and held on for a 74-69 win.
"We can't get complacent," forward Derek Reese said. "We've still got to work on areas we need to focus on. We're still focused. We still haven't what we wanted to accomplish yet, so we can't get relaxed and be like, 'We got this win, so we're good now.' We still have to work hard each day."
The Vols have learned through that two-game swing and an non-conference schedule that included losses to Kansas and VCU that they can compete despite their roster's significant limitations.
"It tells us what we have a lot to learn and we have a lot of potential," Reese said. "If we come ready to play, we can beat any team in the country. That tells us mentally that we have to be ready each game."
There were always going to be highs and lows for these Vols, and Tyndall said he expects his team to continue rebounding well and sharing the ball consistently well while trying to "shore up" an offense capable of going long stretches of struggles.
He also expects his team to keep being resilient and scrappy.
"Our team has competed every night," Tyndall said, "so I expect that to continue."
Even if the NCAA tournament talk begins to fade.
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.