The SEC Softball Tournament got underway Tuesday night, but Tennessee softball won't compete until Thursday.

As the 4-seed in the event, the Lady Vols will play either 5-seed Arkansas or 12-seed Georgia in the tournament's third round. First pitch is scheduled for approximately 1:45 p.m. ET in Athens, Georgia.

Prior to the trip south, Tennessee head coach Karen Weekly met with the media. Here's what she said.

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"Yeah, I mean, this is what you prepare for all year and everything you do leading up to this point is so you can experience every different environment, every different game situation. Having to come back, just how you respond the next day to a difficult game.

"So I feel like we've been through it all and we're ready for anything and really, everybody's record right now is 0-0."

"I think it's good because, you know, in large respect, that's what the postseason is like. You might have a double elimination tournament, but at some point, you're going to get into a hey, we gotta win this to advance. So I kind of like the SEC tournament set up that way."

"I think our goal in terms of how we want to play hasn't changed and that is when we hesitate, whether it's at the plate, in the circle, on defense, bad things happen. And so for us, it's let's go down there and start with our game on Thursday, have a game where in all three phases we can say we were on the attack.

"Most of our errors occur when somebody hesitates. And we've just kind of gotta get past that and most of our bad offensive outings occur when we are too hesitant at the plate and we take too many good pitches and don't get into kind of an attacking, swing mode. So, we're still battling, I think the same demon, but every game is a chance for us to improve in that respect."

"You know, I think they've responded really well. And as far as their mental game and their energy, I thought it was good all the weekend, regardless of what was happening on the field and that's something you wanna see this time of year. You don't wanna see your team really take big swings mentally either way, too high or too low, and I don't think we did that. We had a good practice yesterday and and I expect another good one today."

"It's a lot of things and I think that's sometimes the mistake athletes make is they're trying to find what's the magical cure and a lot of it is the fear of failure. And then that makes you kind of hesitate and paralyze yourself. And I think that's a challenge for every athlete. And I think collectively, they can really lean on each other in that respect because we're not counting on any one of them to carry the day for us. We need everybody getting out there and attacking and doing what they can do.

"And I think a big part of it is not focusing on your results and understanding that it's the process is all the that matters. Because you can bat a thousand on your process in terms of being aggressive and playing the game on the attack. But when the outside world is telling you that it's all about your results and how many hits you got and things like that, it's pretty hard for athletes to balance that. So, as coaches and within this building, we talked about process all the time."

"I think they're gonna be. I mean, you've got potentially three games in three days in order to win this thing, and fortunately, we put ourselves in that position instead of four to five games, but there's no way you want to just hand the ball to Karyln (Pickens) three-straight days right now and and ask her to do it all. And I think Sage (Mardjetko) had a really good outing this past weekend against Texas A&M that should put her in a pretty confident space."

The press conference took place before Georgia eliminated Kentucky on Tuesday.

"You know, we've seen two out of the three. Kentucky, we didn't play. Actually, Georgia and Arkansas were our first two series, so it seems like forever ago. There's a little bit of familiarity, but honestly, everybody changes so much as the season goes along. I think we're a very different team than we were either of those weekends. We had good outcomes. At Georgia, I didn't think we played particularly well and certainly we were pretty bad against Arkansas, and that was a turning point for us. So there's still going to be a lot of scouting you have to do. So, again, the familiarity goes both ways, too."

"I think the big key is not getting to the fifth inning and saying, 'Hey, we've been taking too many pitches and now we need to attack.' And that's been kind of the story in those games. It's from the first inning on, being in an attack mindset, not letting good pitches go by and then we're able to make adjustments. We can't really make adjustments when we haven't been approaching the at-bats the right way."

"Everybody wants to be at home, but we've won on the road, we've won at home, we've lost on the road, we've lost at home. So I don't know how much that really, really matters. I mean, we're fighting for it. We'd like to be in the top-eight, but I think it's more about just your team's mindset, no matter who you're playing and where you're playing. You're going to have to get a matchup that you think is in your favor. You're gonna have to play well and you're gonna have to have a little bit of luck along the way, too."

"Oh, I think just because everything kind of starts over, you know? Nothing you've done to this point matters. So if you're frustrated or you feel like there's something missing in your game, hey, now's your chance. It's a clean slate. And that's what postseason is all about.

"I love the fact that we played a really, really tough schedule. I mean, there's nobody in the country that we're gonna see that has something different or better than what we've already seen, and not just seen once, but seen multiple times. So we're prepared."

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