KNOXVILLE - Tennessee's men's basketball team may be only four games into an 18-game Southeastern Conference schedule, but a three-game losing streak has it at a crossroads.
The momentum the young Volunteers created by following a nonconference win at East Tennessee State with a victory at Texas A&M to start SEC play is all but gone, zapped by home losses to Arkansas and South Carolina and a defeat at Florida.
The Vols (8-8, 1-3) play at Vanderbilt (8-8, 2-2) on Saturday night before playing at Ole Miss (10-6, 1-3) on Tuesday.
"We've got to turn it around right now," senior Robert Hubbs III said after Wednesday night's 70-60 loss to South Carolina. "We can't start five games later. We've got to start it now preparing for Vandy and going on the road and getting a road win."
Coach Rick Barnes contested the notion his team has regressed overall during this losing streak, but the Vols certainly aren't progressing.
"Is there more room for us to get better? Absolutely," he said. "Our guard play has regressed, I can tell you that. We haven't had the problems we've had the last two games, and maybe it's my fault trying to get (Jordan) Bone in there quicker than he's ready, but it's obvious teams are teeing up against us on the perimeter and trying to get after our guards.
"When you're being pressured, you've got to beat the pressure, you've got to go score and make somebody help and make the simple pass. We still aren't handling the ball the way we need to. The fact is we've got to get better."
With three freshmen starting and two others playing regular minutes - and freshman forward John Fulkerson was starting before his injury - the Vols always were going to be a project, with some days better than others.
Though Barnes wants to see his players develop and his team improve, he still values results more than progress, saying he wants to "win right now" and believes his team can do that if "five guys think as one."
"When you have young guys, you've got to make them understand they've got to want to win right now," Barnes said. "I believe you have to teach that. I don't think you can stand before them in a game and say we're building something for the future, because I think all we've got's the next game. They've got to have the will.
"I've had teams like this before, to be honest with you, and you coach them like you'd coach a team that's ranked No. 1 in the country, like we've got 40 minutes here and we've got to go out and win this basketball game. There's a process you're going through, and you've got to get better every day. And we will, because I think we've got a good group of guys. If we don't listen, we'll struggle. If we listen, we'll be OK, because when you battle as hard as they're battling, it's going to happen for us."
Freshman Grant Williams acknowledged performances like the loss to South Carolina clearly show the Vols they have a long way to go to become an NCAA tournament-caliber team.
"We've got to be a collective group, just like South Carolina is," he said. "Even when guys are down and not playing well or making bad decisions, they're there to boost them up and keep it together rather than fall apart. We've just got to do a better job with that. We've got to talk to each other and get a win to get us out of this skid. In order for us to out of the skid, we've got to play harder and play with more experience. We've had these tough challenges, and we just didn't respond the past three losses."
Barnes isn't worried about his team's confidence, because he believes the Vols won't stop working to improve.
"It's our job as coaches to keep getting these guys better and to keep doing our game plan," he said. "I'll look at what I did or didn't do in terms of truly getting them to understand how we've got to run our offense the way we need to do it. I just think we've got too much character with this group that these guys, they're not going to quit playing.
"They realize it's a long way to go and we're working towards being a better team."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.