Doubts about Tennessee's success in the upcoming NCAA tournament didn't just creep in with Friday afternoon's performance in Nashville.
They gushed in.
The No. 5 Volunteers suffered their worst setback of the season with their 73-56 debacle against Mississippi State in the Southeastern Conference tournament quarterfinals. Tennessee had arrived at Bridgestone Arena as the league's outright regular-season champion and with the potential of earning the first No. 1 NCAA tourney seed in program history.
That Tennessee is now certain to be a No. 2 seed is the least of its worries, as no more mulligans remain for a team that trailed the Bulldogs by as many as 23 points.
"Well, I told them, 'Let's just sit here and think about how we feel right now,'" Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said in a news conference after his Vols fell to 24-8. "I said, 'Let's just talk about it, sit here and marinate in how you feel right now. If you feel like this again, it's over. I want you to not forget right now what you did, because this time of year you want to give it your best.'
"For the teams that can play through three days to win their conference tournament or through six days to win the national championship, there has to be somewhat of a desperate mindset that every possession matters. We didn't play with that type of mentality today."
Barnes even admitted it might have been a blessing his Vols got a performance like that "out of our system."
Tennessee took a seven-game winning streak into last Saturday's regular-season finale inside the Food City Center against Kentucky, which wound up being an 85-81 loss. Now the Vols are having to think about their first two-game losing streak since falling to Purdue and Kansas on consecutive days last November at the Maui Invitational.
"I'm frustrated," Vols fifth-year senior guard Josiah-Jordan James said. "We're all frustrated. We're upset, but the real season and the end goal starts now. The next 40 minutes could be our last."
The Vols were never in Friday's game, falling behind 15-4 within the first eight minutes and by 38-19 at halftime. SEC player of the year Dalton Knecht was just 4-of-17 from the floor, while James and Santiago Vescovi were a combined 1-of-11.
Junior point guard Zakai Zeigler scored a game-high 20 points but had four turnovers to two assists, while Tennessee's top post players, Jonas Aidoo and Tobe Awaka, tallied five combined points.
"When we go watch the film, we can't take anything personal," Zeigler said. "The film doesn't lie. We've just got to take it to heart and know if we go out there and do that again, it's going to be the end of the season. We've got to know what's at cost."
Tennessee has shown on multiple occasions this season that this group might be different from its predecessors when it comes to making a historic NCAA tournament run. It's hard to find a program that defines March mediocrity more than Tennessee, which has an all-time mark of 25-26 in NCAA play, or a coach more so than Barnes, who is 27-26.
Friday's showing in Nashville did nothing to quiet those critics who claim these Vols are simply on the verge of providing more early-round heartache.
"I've had teams in the many years that I've been blessed to do this that were playing well at the end of the year but didn't do well in the NCAA tournament," Barnes said. "I've had a couple teams that were limping a little bit but ended up having great runs. We are who we are right now.
"Our older guys who we count on to get us going struggled in a big way today. We've just got to get back to being who I know we are and who I think they know we can be."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.