KNOXVILLE - There was a time that playing women's basketball at the University of Tennessee meant being in the conversation for a national championship year in and year out.
That time has not been this season. For this team, new goals are having to be set.
The Lady Volunteers need to win both of their two final regular-season games - at home against Vanderbilt on Thursday and at Ole Miss on Sunday - just to break even at 8-8 in the Southeastern Conference heading into the conference tournament March 6-10 in Greenville, South Carolina.
The eight league losses are tied for the most in program history with the 2015-16 team. That team lost 14 games overall but advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight before falling to Syracuse.
"We definitely look ahead as a team, and we understand that we need to win these games," Tennessee sophomore forward Rennia Davis said Sunday. "But right now we are taking it game by game and trying to get better."
The Lady Vols are 17-10 after Sunday's 82-67 loss to 14th-ranked South Carolina that made them 1-6 against ranked teams. It was a second consecutive lackluster performance, and it followed a trend in which they played well in three quarters but were unable to overcome one bad one. Against Texas A&M it was a 27-12 third quarter in a 17-point loss; against the Gamecocks it was the first quarter, in which the Lady Vols fell behind 27-11. They would trail by at least 20 before going on a run to cut the game to single digits a number of times in the second half.
Now the challenge is simple: Beat Vanderbilt and Ole Miss, and the Lady Vols can maintain their streak of NCAA tournament appearances. The latest ESPN bracketology has Tennessee as a nine-seed and safely in the tournament field. But a loss to either Vanderbilt or Ole Miss - teams that are a combined 4-24 in SEC play - could affect that.
The chief issue for coach Holly Warlick is trying to figure out how to get a 40-minute effort from her team after a sixth double-digit loss, which is tied for the most in school history with that 2015-16 team.
"We've talked about how getting down the stretch that you need the games," Warlick said Sunday. "They know it. They know, and they understand it. It's all over social media; they read it, so they know. They know; we all know. We got ourselves in this hole, so you have to climb out of it and you have to get these next two games, absolutely."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.