No. 25 Tennessee seems to be hitting its stride as the first half of the SEC season winds down.
The Volunteers (15-6, 5-3 SEC) will try to win their fourth consecutive game when they play Ole Miss (11-10, 3-5) on Tuesday night in Knoxville, Tenn.
Tennessee slipped out of the AP Top 25 when it started SEC play 2-3, but wins at Alabama and Georgia and a 77-69 home victory against Auburn on Saturday returned the Vols to the rankings on Monday.
The latest victory came despite the absence of starting center Felix Okpara, a significant defensive force who averages 5.9 rebounds and 1.6 blocks. Okpara suffered a calf injury against Georgia three days earlier.
“In a situation where somebody is a game-time decision (and doesn’t play),” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said, “somebody has to step up.”
Barnes got a team effort as Nate Ament, Bishop Boswell, Jaylen Carey and Amari Evans each grabbed eight rebounds.
“Our front line, that was something we haven’t had for a couple years,” Barnes said.
The coach was pleased with the victory against an Auburn team that had won four straight. The Vols overcame foul trouble for leading scorer Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who played nearly five minutes fewer than his average of 33.5 and finished with 11 points, 7.6 below his average.
But Barnes doesn’t want his team to be satisfied with its mini-surge.
“Complacency is an evil,” he said. “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. My biggest fear in coaching has always been complacency. It’s never easy. If players don’t realize that they have to get better every day, then it gets away from you.”
Ole Miss still has time to prevent its season from getting away, but coach Chris Beard admitted “our backs are against the wall.”
The Tennessee matchup will be the Rebels’ sixth road game in the first nine SEC games and they will face a seventh road game against Texas before getting back home.
“It’s been quite a challenge,” Beard said. “We’ve been able to win a couple road games at this point.”
Ole Miss almost got a third road win Saturday before falling to then-No. 18 Vanderbilt 71-68.
The Rebels fought back from a 13-point deficit against the Commodores and missed two shots on the final possession.
“We’ve been in a lot of games just like this,” Beard said. “We just need one more break down the stretch, one more play throughout the course of the game.”
Ole Miss has 10 more games beginning with the one against the Volunteers. Six of their last eight will be at home and then they’ll have the SEC tournament to try to bolster their postseason resume.
“We just haven’t done the things that we needed to do in the nonconference schedule to put ourselves in great contention right now,” Beard said, “but there’s lots of season left.”
Malik Dia, Ole Miss’ second-leading scorer (13.8), scored 16 points in each of the last two games after having just 16 in the previous three games combined.
–Field Level Media
