Tennessee spent a good portion of the season ranked as the nation’s No. 1 team but after a grueling end to the conference schedule, the program finished tied for second in the SEC with a 15-3 league mark.

Some Tennessee fans may have been disappointed by the results at the end of the regular season but Rick Barnes believes the challenges his program faced to close out the regular season has prepared the team for the do-or-die scenarios that are coming up in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments.

“Well we do think we are prepared from what we’ve seen. We try to prepare our non-league schedule for the SEC and I think we did that but really, this year, you think last year we shared the conference title with five losses. This year, we lose three games and finish second in the league with Kentucky so the league is better than its ever been,” Barnes said during a recent appearance on ESPN. “It really is. The fact that on any given night, you have to be on top of your game or you are going to get beat.”

In addition to excelling in one of the nation’s toughest conferences this season, where Tennessee, Kentucky and LSU are all still in the running for a potential No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the one advantage Barnes’ team has that few can match nationally is experience. Tennessee is loaded with juniors and seniors that have played together for several years and have experienced several must-win situations.

According to Barnes, that experience should really pay off for the team in the weeks to come.

“With all that we had returning from last year, what we learned a year ago and what we’ve been able to continue to learn this year, it’s something we should know and what we should know is this time of year, you can’t have any off nights. You have got to be on top of the things you can control. Your defensive gameplan, your effort there, the little things,” Barnes continued.

“That’s what experience should help you with right now — even when you aren’t playing your best. We have been able to win some games like that but this time of the year, you have to be sharp mentally, more so than physically and I think our team understands that.”