The Tennessee Volunteers will play their 20th game of this coronavirus-altered basketball season Tuesday night when they host South Carolina.
By this point of the winter grind, most teams have developed a reasonable identity, but Tennessee sixth-year coach Rick Barnes isn't sure what to expect from his team on a given outing. The Vols are 14-5 overall but just 4-4 in their past eight contests, reflecting a true Forrest Gump box-of-chocolates contingent in which freshmen have become more reliable than seniors.
"That is one of the hardest things in coaching," Barnes said Saturday. "You try to play the game as many different ways as you can, knowing that you'll have to be ready to make some kind of adjustments. The 'What are we going to get today?' might be as bad a feeling as a coach can have. When you don't know, that's the hard part. It really is.
"The inconsistency is coming from our older players, and that's the disappointing thing. We shouldn't be putting the pressure on the younger guys to do what they've been trying to do for us. They're talented players, but we still need balance."
In Tennessee's past three games — wins over Kentucky and Georgia and Saturday afternoon's 78-65 loss at LSU — the newcomer tandem of Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer combined for 124 points and an average of 41.3 per game. The senior duo of John Fulkerson and Yves Pons, however, combined for 17 points and a 5.7 average.
Fulkerson, who earned a spot on the Wooden Award Midseason Top 25 watch list, has scored eight total points the past three games, and at LSU he was not in the starting lineup for the first time this season.
"We're never going to quit on him," Barnes said. "I've seen guys go through it for whatever reason, but I've also seen guys just flip it around and turn the switch on. That won't happen, though, unless it comes from within. I don't think there is any question that he has seen that if he's not doing it, he's not going to get to stay out there. He owes it to his teammates, and we owe to each other to get guys who are going to be productive.
"Also, it's on the defensive end where he's making some mistakes, and that has to do with where he is mentally overall. Any time you start doubting yourself and get back on your heels, you're not going to be a factor. You won't be able to be aggressive, because when doubt creeps in, it freezes you. I think some of that has happened with him."
With Fulkerson struggling and Pons working through knee soreness that kept him out of Wednesday's 89-81 win over Georgia, the leadership role seemingly has been transferred to sophomore Josiah-Jordan James, who does a little bit of everything for the Vols and has been a mentor for Springer and Johnson.
"It's definitely very frustrating," James said. "To get to where we want to go, the maturity level has to come up. It has to start with us as guys who have been here, and I don't think that we have that yet. I just think that for us right now to get where we want to go, we just have to get a lot more consistent and a lot more mature.
"We don't really have that much time to keep talking about it, but we know what we want to do. We want to win a national championship, so our maturity definitely has to rise up to another level."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.
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