No. 4 Tennessee will travel to Columbia, South Carolina, this week for their penultimate SEC regular season matchup against No. 17 South Carolina this Wednesday night.
Rick Barnes’ Vols have strung together six straight wins following a loss to Texas A&M on Feb. 10 with the most recent two being against Top 15 teams. Tennessee defeated No. 11 Auburn in Knoxville last Wednesday (92-84) and took down No. 14 Alabama (81-74) on Saturday night in Tuscaloosa.
South Carolina, meanwhile, has rattled off three straight wins (at Ole Miss, at Texas A&M, vs Florida) after dropping back-to-back games against LSU and Auburn in mid-February.
This will be the second game between the Vols and the Gamecocks this season as South Carolina handed Tennessee their first and only home loss of the season so far in a 63-59 win in Knoxville on Jan. 30.
“But our team, I think we’ve tried to get better,” Rick Barnes said on Wednesday. “As you guys have been with us from the beginning, I know we’ve talked about consistency, we’ve talked about rebounding, ball screen out a lot of different things. And the kids, I think that we’ve still tried to improve as the season goes on. And I would tell you we’re going to court today with that in mind, knowing that we’ve got to (have) a mindset that we can really try to get our game plan in and know we we’re going to have to execute it, but also things that we know we’ve got to get better with, we’ve got to try to get better with.”
With Tennessee leading South Carolina by one game in the SEC standings with only two to go, Saturday’s game will prove to be critical in the race for the conference. The Vols sit atop the standings with a 13-3 conference record while the Gamecocks follow closely at 12-4 in the SEC.
Tennessee will then host No. 15 Kentucky in their regular-season finale this Saturday night in Knoxville.
Ahead of the upcoming road game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes and forward J.P. Estrella met with the media on Tuesday afternoon in Knoxville. Both spoke about their closing thoughts from the Vols’ big weekend win over Alabama and also broke down their thoughts on Wednesday’s South Carolina contest.
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Check out both interviews below:
Tennessee HC Rick Barnes
Tennessee F J.P. Estrella
