Young Vols not thinking 'next year'

Tennessee forward Grant Williams shoots during the Vols' 77-65 win Wednesday night at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville. The Vols are working to stay in the NCAA tournament bubble conversation.
Tennessee forward Grant Williams shoots during the Vols' 77-65 win Wednesday night at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville. The Vols are working to stay in the NCAA tournament bubble conversation.

KNOXVILLE - With seven regular-season games remaining, the stakes are much higher than expected for Tennessee's men's basketball team.

And that's fine for the young Volunteers.

Tennessee is firmly on the bubble for the NCAA tournament more than a week into February, which only adds to the importance of the games left on its schedule.

"No matter who you are, you want to play in March," freshman forward Grant Williams said after Wednesday night's 77-65 home win against Ole Miss.

"No matter where you play, no matter what level you are, you want to play. Guys want to play as long as they can. No matter who we play, it's going to be a challenge. No matter where you play, you're going to have a challenge, so we have to respond well and do a better job."

The Vols remained No. 37 in the NCAA's official Rating Percentage Index (they're 36th in analyst Ken Pomeroy's trusted rankings), and Wednesday's victory gave them an eighth win against a team in the RPI top 100. The strong numbers stem from facing one of the nation's toughest schedules, four true road wins and key victories against Kentucky and Kansas State, and they are why the Vols are playing for a spot in the NCAA tournament this month.

"I wouldn't say I'm pleased, because I know we let a couple games slip out of our hands," said senior Robert Hubbs III, Tennessee's leading scorer with an average of 14.5 points per game. "But it's not a bad position for us. We've just got to take care of these next few games "

In their Monday updates, ESPN had Tennessee the second team out of the NCAA tournament field and Sports Illustrated had the Vols one of the last four teams in the tournament. USA Today has Tennessee firmly in the bracket as a No. 10 seed.

With 10 losses already, though, the margin of error for the Vols is very small. Their four remaining home games are against free-falling Georgia (Saturday), lowly Missouri (Feb. 18), in-state rival Vanderbilt (Feb. 22) and up-and-down Alabama (March 4). Two of the three remaining road games are against Southeastern Conference contenders Kentucky (Feb. 14) and South Carolina (Feb. 25), and the third is at woeful LSU (March 1).

Since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, only six teams with 14 losses have received at-large bids into the field, so Tennessee probably has to finish 5-2 heading into the SEC tournament to avoid having that magic number in the loss column come Selection Sunday.

Second-year Tennessee coach Rick Barnes is accustomed to high-stakes February games - he coached Providence, Clemson and Texas to multiple NCAA tournament appearances - but for his players, this is all new territory. Graduate transfer Lew Evans is the only one with NCAA tournament playing experience (from his days at Tulsa), though Hubbs was a spectator for Tennessee's most recent tournament appearance after having season-ending surgery as a freshman.

Some of the nerves showed for the Vols in the first half Wednesday, when Barnes believed his team played "uptight" and "back on our heels" for stretches against Ole Miss.

"You're going to have to win some tough games," he said. "We're going to have the same kind of battle on our hands here Saturday. We could tell the first half we were back a little bit. Maybe they felt the pressure because we lost Saturday (at Mississippi State) that we had to win this game, and all you have to do is execute the game plan.

"If you win, you win. If you don't, you don't. As long as you know you've done what we needed to do. I will say this: I think the schedule that we've played all year has helped these guys get to this point, and now we've just got to see if we can keep building on it."

It's entirely surprising Tennessee, picked to finish next-to-last in the SEC, is even in this discussion, but the Vols have larger aspirations.

"It's been basically a whole season," Williams said. "We're toward the end, and we can't really say we're freshmen anymore, because it's February. That shouldn't be an excuse anymore. We've had these games. We've established that in the locker room we shouldn't blame it on youth, we shouldn't blame it on maturity and how we'll do it next year.

"We're thinking about this year."

Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.

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