Tennessee is playing its best basketball of the season as March Madness nears.
The No. 22 Volunteers (20-7, 10-4 Southeastern Conference) have won four straight games and nine of their last 11. They climbed back into the Associated Press Top 25 this week.
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes applauded his team’s toughness ahead of its game against Missouri (18-9, 8-6) Tuesday night in Columbia, Mo.
“When you talk about toughness, it’s not just the physicality part of it, it’s the mental toughness part,” Barnes said. “That’s where we’ve improved the most. Two games in a row now, back-to-back, where we’ve had less than 10 turnovers.
“Early into conference play, we were throwing everything all over the place, having no purpose, what we were doing on offense. We’ve gotten better with that, but we still, like every team right now, we still got to get better, and that’s been our thought process all year.”
The Volunteers are coming off a key 69-65 rivalry victory at then-No. 19 Vanderbilt on Saturday. While Nate Ament had an off night, shooting 3-for-13 from the field, Ja’Kobi Gillespie scored 17 points with 3-for-7 shooting from 3-point range.
Tennessee’s playing rotation has been bolstered by the development of freshman forward DeWayne Brown II, who played 51 minutes over the past two games while contributing 21 points, seven rebounds and two assists with zero turnovers.
“No question, DeWayne Brown has been the biggest surprise on our team this year, and he’s only going to get better and better,” Barnes said. “Really knows how to play. Great hands, sees the floor and the more he’s in the game, the more he gets a great feel for it.”
Brown played 30 minutes at Vanderbilt with forward Felix Okpara limited due to foul trouble and forward J.P. Estrella sidelined by left foot soreness. Estrella missed most of last season after undergoing surgery on that foot.
While Tennessee can target a high NCAA Tournament seed with its No. 17 NET ranking entering the week, Missouri remains on the selection bubble at No. 61.
The Tigers had won four of their last five games before falling 94-86 at then-No. 20 Arkansas on Saturday.
“You know, having 10 turnovers on the road to 18 assists is great, but we still had too many turnovers in crucial moments that I thought hurt us, and it helped Arkansas’ run,” Missouri coach Dennis Gates said.
Missouri needs better play from point guards T.O. Barrett and Anthony Robinson II, who had as many combined turnovers (six) as assists against the Razorbacks.
“You have to debrief and look at the mistakes, see what you can do better,” Gates said. “You have to look in the mirror, see what you can improve on. And obviously, the preparation. Is there something in the preparation that needs tweaking or not?
“As a team, I’ve been proud of how our guys recovered from tough losses this season. They’ve done a tremendous job, so we have to continue to do that.”
While Mark Mitchell (17.2 points per game) and Jayden Stone (14.9) have paced the Tigers this season, Trent Pierce (11.0) has emerged as a scoring threat of late.
Pierce missed the entire nonconference schedule with a lower-body injury and started slowly in SEC play. But he’s scored 38 points over his last two games and 65 points in the last four.
