Rick Barnes not worried about effort level amid ups and downs in schedule

Tennessee is limping its way into the final three games of its regular season schedule. They’ve lost five of their last seven and with the Vols’ postseason bid already locked up, head coach Rick Barnes isn’t worried about Tennessee’s recent tough stretch of games.

Instead, he trusts his guys to get their act together before March Madness.

“We’re going to find a way. I’ve seen a lot of things in my career. I’ve seen teams that struggle as we have here,” Barnes said. “… We’ve got some guys, some guys that we’ve been playing with, they have great character. They’re going to fight. We are not going to be perfect.”

Barnes singled out Zakai Zeigler and Tyreke Key, saying the two guards know how valuable an asset they can be to the team on a nightly basis, but they need to shoot the ball more and be more agressive when it comes to creating shots for themselves.

“We feel like [they’re] turning down shots. We’re begging those guys to take those shots,” Barnes said. “Tonight, I thought our guys do a great job with the shot fake and getting into gaps because we have a lot of wide-open shots.

“And, again, I don’t have a problem with the number of threes [Zeigler and Key take], but when we get great looks at it we have to let it go. I believe that when we shoot it and get the rhythm going, we’ll make our share of them and if not we’ll go rebound the ball.”

It’s no secret how good Tennessee is. They lost three of their first 21 games and was able to go on multi-game winning streaks after each of those losses. Since losing on the road at Florida, Tennessee has had a miserable February but still finds itself No. 4 overall in the current NET rankings and ESPN’s Bracketology expert Joe Lunardi ranks them No. 10 overall at the three-seed line in his latest projetions heading into the weekend.

The Vols will round their season out with two home games agaisnt South Carolina and Arkansas, respectively, before travelling to Auburn Arena to take on the Tigers in the regular season finale. First up are the Gamecocks, who UT will take on Saturday afternoon at 6 p.m. ET live on the SEC Network.