Stop me if you’ve heard this before — Rick Barnes has the team to make a deep run.

He has the defense, which should travel anywhere. His team is battle-tested, which we know based on the fact that only 7 teams have more Quad 1 wins than the Vols (7). Perhaps most important, Barnes is too good of a coach to continue to struggle in March, and this is the year that he breaks through.

Sounds familiar, right?

To be clear, Barnes is one of the most accomplished active coaches in the country having been to the NCAA Tournament a whopping 26 times with 4 programs. Well, it’ll be 27 when Tennessee punches its ticket on Selection Sunday. You can do a whole worse than having a guy with 25 career victories in NCAA Tournament games. Outside of John Calipari, nobody in the SEC comes close to that and, including Bruce Pearl, Barnes is 1 of 3 SEC head coaches who has been to a Final Four.

But the well-documented shortcomings in March continue to be the “yeah, but” in Barnes’ prolific career.

Of those 26 NCAA Tournament appearances, 19 ended without a trip to the second weekend, including 9 of Barnes’ past 10 trips to The Big Dance. In each of his 4 NCAA Tournament appearances at Tennessee, his team was eliminated by a lower-seeded team.

Therein lies the frustration with Barnes. There’s no question that the Vols are better with him at the helm. It also can’t be a coincidence that he has just 1 Sweet 16 appearance during his past 14 seasons as a head coach.

The offensive droughts have been well-documented. In all of those 9 first weekend exits in Barnes’ past 10 NCAA Tournament appearances, his teams were held to less than 70 points in regulation. That included last year when an all-too-familiar theme played out. Against a lower-seeded team, Barnes’ squad appeared to be in control up 6 at the under-8 timeout, only to then allow an 18-6 run in the next 7-plus minutes. The Vols shot 25% during that crucial stretch, wherein they lacked the offensive firepower they needed to keep their season alive.

“It’s very frustrating. Whether you lose on the first day, the second day, like we did today, or you lose in the semifinals, it’s the same feeling,” Barnes said after the loss (via AP). “I’ve been frustrated a lot in my career, but I’m also very thankful that I’ve been able to be here.”

From the outside looking in, I’d argue that others might feel a bit differently on when exactly that NCAA Tournament exit feels most painful. Sure, 2018-19 was painful because that was one of the best Tennessee teams ever with Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield. To enter the NCAA Tournament as a 2-seed and not get past the Sweet 16 was indeed frustrating. Losing on opening weekend in a 3 vs. 11 matchup? More frustrating.

Barnes got more March frustration when he learned on the first day of the month that starting point guard Zakai Zeigler would be out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. On a team with limiting scoring options, that was a brutal late-season development, especially on the heels of Tennessee losing 4 of 5 games prior to Arkansas.

That unknown will still linger even if Tennessee, who currently ranks No. 1 in KenPom in adjusted defensive efficiency, wins the SEC Tournament and rolls into March with a 2-seed. Will the Vols be able to get enough scoring when it matters?

We don’t know. We do know that this Tennessee team is 19-2 when it hits 68 points in a game and 3-6 when it doesn’t. Same song, different verse? Perhaps. We also know that this could be the 3rd consecutive year in which the Vols enter the NCAA Tournament ranked in the top 5 nationally in points allowed per defensive possession. Go figure that the last Tennessee NCAA Tournament who didn’t hit that mark was the aforementioned 2018-19 Sweet 16 squad, which ranked No. 40 in that department but was No. 3 in points per offensive possession.

It’s clear that this year’s Tennessee team has to find more efficient ways to score. A team who ranks No. 276 in possessions per 40 minutes will feel those scoring droughts in more significant ways.

We know that the Vols would rather slow things down, which explains why they matched up well with a high-tempo team like Alabama, who looked completely out of sorts in the Vols’ 68-59 victory against the top-ranked Tide in February. Then again, each of the last 4 teams who beat Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament ranked outside of the top 160 in adjusted tempo.

But this isn’t about the style of team that trips up the Vols. Now, it’s about when and who is on the other end.

If Barnes’ squad loses to a top-seeded blue-blood like Kansas in the Elite Eight, that shouldn’t be an excuse to fire up the old “Barnes can’t win in March” narrative. Let’s be realistic. The Vols entered March at 35-to-1 to win a title and 10-to-1 to make the Final Four. That’s hardly a failure to come up short, especially at a place with 1 Elite Eight appearance and 0 Final Fours in school history.

This isn’t even about Barnes’ job security. His extension was announced last March after the Vols got upset by Michigan in the Round of 32, though winning the program’s first SEC Tournament Championship since 1979 was deemed worthy of that new deal from athletic director Danny White.

“I can’t overstate how fortunate we are to have Rick Barnes leading our program,” White said after the deal was announced. “I am unbelievably excited about our bright future as we chase future championships on the hardwood.”

Barnes and Tennessee will once again chase the only championship that defines legacies.

The plan is simple — avoid frustration as long as possible.