KNOXVILLE - Tennessee won't open its second basketball season under Rick Barnes for another two weeks, and the head coach will need most of the remaining time to figure out his starting lineup.
The Volunteers essentially begin the season with a closed-door scrimmage against Davidson on Saturday, but Barnes is unsure which five players he'll trot out there first.
The inconsistency of a youthful team and the increased competition at every position is making it hard for Barnes to figure out what to do with a team of unknowns.
"The competitive level of practice and just drills and workouts that we do individually, the intensity's just been unbelievable," sophomore forward Admiral Schofield said Wednesday at the team's media day. "I think we go into every situation thinking it's game-like. I think that everybody has been executing on a high level.
"The biggest thing is coming out and understanding that we don't have that much time left. We're young, and experience is something we don't have, so hard work is something we've got to hang our hats on. That's one of the things we embraced this offseason."
With six freshmen, redshirt freshman Lamonte Turner and graduate transfer Lew Evans, more than half of Tennessee's roster is essentially new, and roles have yet to be defined.
Barnes believes his second team will be more skilled and better defensively than his first, and he clearly expects both his freshman class, ranked 38th nationally and eighth in the SEC by 247Sports, and the Vols, picked to finish 13th in the league, to exceed expectations.
"I do think that we probably have a little more talent than maybe people would have thought," he said. "People are looking at ratings and rankings, but I'm not surprised where we would be picked. I think any time you look at a team in the league that's got nine new faces, you're going to think that's a whole new team coming into a league where there's some teams that have returning players.
"I don't think that will be our No. 1 motivating factor. I'd like to think that it's going to come from within, that we've got some goals that we have set. We've never paid a lot of attention to preseason polls. We can go back last year and probably look at some teams that were ranked in the Top 25 (and) probably didn't even make it to the NCAA tournament.
"The preseason rankings are there to hype college basketball and get it going, but that's why we're going to play the games."
Barnes wants Tennessee to play those games with a certain style. On offense, Tennessee wants to use constant movement to remain in attack mode while avoiding turnovers and poor shot selection. Defensively the Vols must challenge shots and space.
Tennessee finished 15-19 last season and often performed better than the sum of its parts due to sheer effort, which Barnes believes endeared the Vols to their fans.
"This group understands that we have to do that," he said. "If we want to get where we want to go, we've got to want to win every position. We've got to be on edge every possession."
In every practice this preseason a greater sense of competition is driving the new-look Vols.
"It's not the guy who's just going hard," Schofield said. "It's who's doing the right things and playing hard at the same time and understanding that doing your job is the most important thing, and doing it to the best of your ability is what we need here. I think everybody's taking on that role and embracing that role that they're going to do their job and do what they're supposed to do and play the role to the best of their ability.
"That's why I think we'll be successful this year."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.