If you’ve watched the third-ranked Tennessee basketball team warm up for games the past few weeks, you’ve probably wondered Zach Kent is available to play.

Kent, a 6-foot-11 redshirt freshman forward, has gone through pregame warmups as a full participant, and he hasn’t seemed to favor a knee that got scoped just before the start of preseason camp.

But Vols coach Rick Barnes said during his weekly Monday press conference that Kent isn’t ready to participate in games at this point.

Tennessee under Barnes has a practical rule of thumb that players who can’t fully participate in practice don’t play in games. Reigning SEC Sixth Man of the Year Lamonte Turner had to prove his surgically-repaired shoulder was good enough for a full practice before he was cleared to play in games, and Kent’s situation is no different.

Barnes said Kent is getting closer to turning his knee loose for a full practice, but that he still hasn’t reached that point.

“He’s working his way back into everything,” Barnes said. “He’s not back into full practice yet, and he needs to do that as quickly as he can. He hasn’t practiced, obviously, for a long time, but he is starting to do some things. He’s starting to get back into five-on-five.”

Tennessee redshirt freshman forward Zach Kent

Kent — the first Delaware native to play basketball at Tennessee, and a good shooter for a nearly-7-foot player — played in just two games early last season and ultimately was granted a redshirt.

BARNES TALKS BENCH-EMPTYING

Tennessee’s game at Florida went down to the wire, but most of the Vols’ games — including their first two SEC games — were over well before that, and Barnes’ decision to keep starters and regular-rotation members on the court until the final minute or two raised some eyebrows.

Barnes said Monday he didn’t have a specific method for determining when to put walk-ons and sparingly-used scholarship players on the court, but he didn’t deny that paranoia is always a factor in situations like that.

Tennessee’s coach cited last week’s UCLA-Oregon game as the kind of thing that can happen when teams let down their guard too soon. The Ducks blew a 17-point second-half lead and a nine-point lead in the final minute before losing to the Bruins in overtime.

“I’m one of those guys that has seen too much in my lifetime — like just last week, with that UCLA-Oregon game,” Barnes said. “I think momentum’s a big part of it. I think knowing your players and you feeling their body language as a team and our focus. And there’s the 3-point line. I go back to the Missouri game. In the matter of a couple of plays, Admiral [Schofield] throws the ball away, and [you get nervous].

“As a coach, I’m telling you, you can never feel good until you know it’s over. I don’t know if I have a rule of thumb of what we’re gonna do other than each game is more of a feel type of thing with where I think we are and where I think the game is.”