No. 10 Tennessee (12-3, 5-3 SEC) will play at Ole Miss (8-8, 3-6 SEC) Tuesday.
Tipoff is slated for 7 p.m. EST. ESPN2 will televise the contest.
Ahead of the matchup, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes previewed the Ole Miss game and the Vols’ victory against Kansas on Saturday.
Below is a transcript provided by the University of Tennessee.
On if it is concerning that the team had opposite performances in the games against Florida and Kansas:
“Well, I think you’re always concerned when you don’t do the things that you feel like you’re capable of. I also know this—that old saying in coaching—you’re never as good as you think you are and you’re probably never as bad as you think you are. We’re somewhere in the middle probably. To answer that is the word consistency. Can we get consistent with it? Again, when we’ve had everybody healthy, I think we’ve been better. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Even with that said, I think that we are a good enough team that we shouldn’t get beat as badly as we did at Florida. So much of the game is mental and you can get rocked back a little bit, and sometimes it takes you longer to get out of it. We cost ourselves in games because we would not shoot the ball, and that led to a lot of turnovers. Like I said here against Mississippi State the other night when I was talking about kind of the same situation that you’ve asked me about, we finally started shooting the ball. They didn’t go in, but then the challenge was would we continue to shoot open shots. We did that other night against Kansas, and I would be very disappointed—I will tell you this, too. Yesterday during film, I got onto Santi (Vescovi) about turning down some shots that he’s got to take for us. The key going forward will be if we do that, I think it takes a lot of pressure off. You’re not going to make them all. Nobody makes them all against us and we’re not going to make them all, but I think we’re all looking for consistency from everybody. I think that discrepancy—I can’t tell you why it’s like that other than I know that it gets back to consistency.”
NEXT: Rick Barnes media availability continued