Tennessee basketball drops in rankings; SEC recognizes Keon Johnson

For the second straight week, Tennessee basketball had a freshman guard win SEC Freshman of the Week. Yes, even after an embarrassing loss to the Ole Miss Rebels, the Vols’ young talent continues to achieve recognition.

After Jaden Springer earned the honor last week, Keon Johnson earned it this week. Johnson averaged 19 points, four rebounds and three and a half assists. He dropped 27 points in a win at the Kentucky Wildcats last Saturday.

Now, there were some issues in Tennessee basketball’s loss at Ole Miss, as Johnson missed a free throw late that may have cost them the game. However, he did lots of things right throughout the week in general, and he and Springer are showing why they were five-stars. Springer, for what it’s worth, dropped 23 points at Kentucky Saturday.

Although Johnson earned a good bit of recognition, the Vols as a program suffered a hit with last week’s loss. At 13-4 and 6-4 in the SEC, they dropped five spots to No. 16 in the AP Poll and five spots to No. 15 in the Coaches Poll. Two SEC teams, the Missouri Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide, are now ranked ahead of UT at No. 10 and No. 11 respectively in both polls.

In the NCAA NET Rankings, the top barometer for the NCAA Tournament, Rocky Top is now down at No. 10. Alabama is the only team ahead of them in that one at No. 8. Although it doesn’t mean much anymore, we should note that Tennessee basketball is down at No. 38 in the RealTime RPI due to the No. 70 ranked strength of schedule.

Rick Barnes’ weekly media session

So what is Rick Barnes’ assessment of all this? Well, in his Monday press conference, which you can see here, he said the play of Johnson and Springer won’t change how he runs the offense. Although he praised the play of both freshmen, Barnes still stressed the importance of Yves Pons and John Fulkerson. Here’s a bit of what he said on that front.

"“We still want to continue to run and take advantage of everybody that we have. But when (John) Fulkerson was not in the game you have to think about how if he is not out there how do you want to play offense.”…“We have got enough guys that on any given night we have five or six guys that can do some damage on the offensive end. And we are expecting those six and seven guys that we are counting on heavily to do what they are supposed to do on the defensive end. We have confidence in them, but sometimes it takes time for those guys to realize it themselves and understand what we mean.”"

Beyond those four guys, Barnes said Josiah-Jordan James is just “scratching the surface” of what will be his game. James had 10 points and 10 rebounds at Kentucky, and he hit exactly 10 points in both games last week.

In terms of inside players, Barnes said the effort is there and implied that E.J. Anosike, Olivier Nkamhoua and Uros Plavsic just need to understand where they can be most effective. However, that’s a lot nicer than he was with Pons and Fulkerson, insisting that those veterans need to do their part when called on.

This week, Tennessee basketball will host the Georgia Bulldogs Wednesday, which replaces their initial matchup with the Florida Gators, who are dealing with a COVID outbreak. They will then visit the LSU Tigers Saturday. Those teams are 12-6 and 11-6 respectively, so there are some opportunities for the program coming up.