Tomorrow night against Syracuse, guard Jenis Grindstaff will get the start in the backcourt with Jon Higgins. In a matter of less than a month, Grindstaff has gone from a player Buzz Peterson had very little confidence in to maybe Tennessee best guard right now. I had a chance to talk to Grindstaff about his improved play, as well as the mindset of this team after another close loss on Wednesday night.

Q: Are you trying to take over the leadership role of this team in the backcourt?

A: “Not really, I am just trying to go in there and play as hard as I can. I feel like coach has a lot more confidence in me. I don’t think he had that the first of the year and the last couple of games I have been playing a little bit better bringing some extra energy off the bench.”

Q: Does this backcourt need someone to take over?

A: “I think Jon has done a good job. Thaddeus has struggled here of late and we need some guys to step in and be aggressive and we need some guys who will attack the goal and either shoot or dish off and I feel that is one of the things I think I can do. Jon can knock the three down and he has been a good solid point guard.”

Q: You said after the Mississippi State game that is was time to win games and that just giving great effort and playing hard is not good enough. Do you get the sense with this team that hard work and great effort is not going to cut it anymore?

A: “I think we were starting to feel that way before the Mississippi State game. We have been playing hard, but after Wednesday’s game we all said that you know this is not enough anymore. We come out here and work our butt’s off, but we are 6-9 so we need to figure out what we can do individually to help the team get better.”

Q: What specific things does this team need to do to get a win?

A: “Not one specific thing. We need to stay focused through the whole complete game. At Mississippi State we started out like 15-4 or something. We were clicking and then all of a sudden we stopped playing. We had some silly turnovers. We need to take the first five minutes of that game and carry it through the entire game. Sometimes we lose our focus. Things come easy for us and we stop working hard.”

Q: Do you worry about this team starting to question their hard work and asking is it worth it?

A: “Not really. If we were a younger team that might be the case, but we have some good solid guys who have been here a while. We know it is a long season and we know we are better than our 6-9 record. We are going to continue to come out here and work hard and we know we are going to get better.”

The question remains can Grindstaff and the rest of the team find away to turn hard work into a win.