KNOXVILLE - The Tennessee Volunteers have been here before this basketball season.
Coming off an encouraging performance in a home victory, Tennessee had a skittish performance and disheartening defeat on the road.
It happened after the Vols knocked off South Carolina and Kentucky, ranked teams that share the Southeastern Conference lead.
After Tuesday's home rout of Auburn, certainly it won't happen when Tennessee visits the league's worst team, right?
"I can't tell you anything different," first-year coach Rick Barnes said before Friday afternoon's practice at Pratt Pavilion. "We had a good practice yesterday after a day off. The guys came in and we know we've got to continue to get better.
"That's something that we talk about every day. We look at what we did and didn't do well. We still feel we've got to be better offensively. We know we've got things we've got to do defensively.
"That's all we can do, is keep trying to improve what we're doing."
Tennessee has yet to win consecutive games in SEC play but has the chance to do so at Missouri today. But that would require the Vols, whom Barnes called "a broken record" after Tuesday's 71-45 win, to deviate from their M.O.
Despite the inconsistency, the Vols are only three games behind the three teams sharing the SEC lead with seven games to go, and they play each of those teams (Kentucky, LSU and South Carolina) following today's game. The Vols would be in the thick of the conference race had they won games they led by double digits against Texas A&M and Alabama, but those leads turned into frustrating losses.
While good enough to beat some of the SEC's leaders and consistently build leads, the Vols also have losses at Auburn, Georgia, TCU and Arkansas.
Tennessee's record is 11-2 inside Thompson-Boling Arena and 1-10 everywhere else.
"We have developed this thing," freshman guard Shembari Phillips said after Tuesday's win, "where we just can't win back to back."
Robert Hubbs III jokingly admitted Tuesday he was "sick of hearing" questions after victories about Tennessee's inability to build off those successes.
"We just have to go in with a good mindset," he added, "and a defensive mindset that we're going to stop them like we did Auburn tonight."
The Vols still have meaningful games to play down the stretch even if their postseason hopes range from slim to none.
"We've talked about it, and we've talked about we've got to control what we can control," Barnes said. "That's just not physical. That's mentally. We control what we have to do on the fundamental, and the fact is it gets down to that one big word: 'consistency.' What are we going to get every single night?
"Do we know what we're going to get from every single guy? I don't. I will tell you I'm pretty sure and have a pretty good feel right now what we're going to get from Kevin (Punter) and Armani (Moore) and even Kyle (Alexander). Kyle seems to have found his role and what he needs to do. We still need him to score more, and we're trying to get him to do that.
"Beyond that, to be totally frank and honest, I don't."
A couple of video sessions ago, Barnes showed his team some important statistics and went through Tennessee's schedule, highlighting the swing games.
"I went through and pointed at certain games," he said. "'Do you think we could have won this game and this game?' and they all said yes. I went back to some of the wins and said, 'Do you think we could have lost this one?' They said yes.
"That's basketball, but the fact is, I do think as long as this team will keep trying to get better, I'm a believer that anything can happen in college basketball. Who knows what we can do?
"I will tell you this, and I'm being very truthful with you, if we play up to our ability, what I do know at this point is that I'm sure we can beat anybody else on our schedule."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.