The Tennessee regular season ended on Saturday with a loss to Vanderbilt at home, falling 86-82. Tennessee did not live up to expectations this year, finishing 21-10 and 11-7 in conference play. The loss also cost them the double bye into the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament.
Still, Rick Barnes knows his team can improve and peak, speaking to the media after the game accoding to Wynton Jackson of the Knoxville News Sentinel.
“Oh, yeah But I'm glad we haven't peaked, because I don't think we've peaked by any stretch of the imagination. I've been doing this a long time I've seen teams struggle, but once they catch that magic in a bottle, they roll with it,” Barnes said of his team. “I've seen teams that thought they couldn't be beat, they get (upset). You've got to do your work and get your team ready, but who knows how it's going to play out… It’s tournament time. … This is the time you need to be peaking — right now.”
Tennessee lost three of its final four games to finish the season, and the offense has struggled in the process.
“This time of year, you have to have really good guard play, and our guard play wasn't great today,” Barnes said. “I think we had two shots in the first half. Our post guys need to touch the basketball whether they score it or not. I asked (the guards) the question, ‘Why?' Their answer mostly is, ‘I don't know.' Some of it is, a lot of guys haven't played with post players, but by now, there's really not an excuse. We know what we should be doing. We established that the other night and we thought we'd finally gotten the balance that we wanted, but evidently we didn't.”
Tennessee has been without Nate Ament, who missed his second straight game with a high ankle sprain. Regardless, they struggled to shoot overall. Tennessee shot just 44 percent from the field and just 25 percent from three.
The Vols will face the winner of Texas and Ole Miss on Thursday in their first game of the SEC Tournament. The SEC Championship game is set for March 15.
