Tennessee’s Armani Moore, right, shoots past Missouri’s Jakeenan Gant, left, during their game Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015, in Columbia, Mo.KNOXVILLE — It seemed unlikely at any point before Tennessee tipped off its basketball season that the Volunteers would be in the NCAA tournament bubble conversation, hanging around the top third of the Southeastern Conference standings or receiving votes in the Associated Press poll.
At certain stages early in Donnie Tyndall’s first season as Tennessee’s coach, such notions appeared even more remote.
Yet that’s where Tennessee finds itself midway through January after a successful start to SEC play.
Now it’s up to the Vols to see how long they can keep it going, starting at South Carolina tonight.
“The most important thing for us as a team is being able to stay humble,” forward Armani Moore said Monday. “We can’t really get ahead of ourselves. There’s still a long season to go, and as a team we’ve got a long way to go as well, because we really haven’t done nothing yet. Yes, we’re 3-1, but like I said, any day we could be 3-3 and back at the bottom again.
“As long as we stay poised in our games and stuff and keep on coming to practice with the right mindset that we know we can’t take any days lightly, then I feel like we can be very successful this year.”
A new coach and essentially a new roster meant low expectations for the Vols, who were picked to finish 13th in the SEC when the league’s preseason poll was released at media days in October.
Yet only top-ranked and unbeaten Kentucky and Florida, which just had a 24-game league win streak snapped at Georgia on Saturday, share winning SEC records with Tennessee through two weeks.
Tennessee owns a respectable RPI (52), received two votes in the new Top 25 poll released Monday and sat as the first team out of one NCAA tournament projection and the fifth team out in another, meaning the Vols unofficially are on the bubble.
This is a team with a nine-man rotation that includes two junior college transfers, two freshman forwards who would be playing sparingly or redshirting in a more ideal situation, another freshman guard and a sophomore who played 12 injury-plagued games as a freshman last season.
“We put the work in this summer,” Moore said. “Anybody else that had different write-ups on us this summer, they were not doing the same work that we’re doing. They’re not in the gym day in, day out putting in major work.
“I feel like it’s not really a big shock for us. We know what we’re capable of doing. We’re just now actually going out and doing it.”
Senior guard Josh Richardson is Tennessee’s best player and its most valuable player and undoubted leader, but Moore may best epitomize these overachieving Vols.
The 6-foot-5 junior from the Atlanta area was named the SEC’s player of the week Monday after he had 15 points and 11 rebounds at Missouri and 14 points and eight rebounds against Arkansas last week.
Moore leads Tennessee in rebounds, and though his athletic ability is impressive, his game certainly deserves labels like scrappy and tough rather than pretty and polished.
At his previous coaching stops at Morehead State and Southern Mississippi, Tyndall won with players like Moore.
“You have to have the mentality that you think you’re better than you are,” he said. “You have to be tough. You have to not let any adversity wear you down, or affect the next play.
“He’s probably an honest 6-foot-4 or 6-foot-5, 210 pounds, and is a true wing player,” the coach added, “but because he think he’s better than he is and he’s tough and he’s gritty, he’s able to overcome those things.
“When I say he thinks he’s better than he is, that’s a compliment, because when you think that way, you’re usually going to play, and that’s certainly been the case for him.”
It’s been the case for the Vols, too.
Now they have to maintain the mentality that got them to this point.
“The only way our team can continue to win or be competitive,” Tyndall said, “is to have an edge and a mentality that if we’re not disciplined, detailed and on edge every day, our talent level isn’t good enough and we’re not well-enough coached to just go beat people. We certainly need to keep that mentality.
“It makes it harder when you’re having success, because all you guys want to write about how good they are now and how great our team is, and they read all this stuff. It’s not the truth. The reason we’re at where we’re at is because we’re a gritty, grimy team that’s coachable and tough and has found a way to have great chemistry and play together.
“If any of that changes, we’ll start failing very, very quickly.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.