KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee guard Jordan McRae doesn’t enjoy answering questions about his team’s NCAA Tournament prospects.

McRae and the Volunteers are making enough of a statement on the floor.

McRae scored 27 points Tuesday night as Tennessee boosted its postseason hopes by beating No. 8 Florida 64-58, the Vols’ sixth consecutive victory. McRae had a career-high 34 points against LSU and 23 points against Texas A&M in the two games leading up to this one.

“I keep saying the same answer,” McRae said. “We won this one. We’ll try to win the next one and try to win the next one. We’re not looking at the SEC [standings]. We’re not trying to find out what seed we’re going to be. We’re just trying to do everything we can, that we can control now. We can’t control the committee or our seed in the SEC.”

Jarnell Stokes had eight points and 14 rebounds as Tennessee (17-10, 9-6 SEC) outrebounded Florida 41-31 and won the lone regular-season meeting between these rivals. This marks the first time since 1964 that Florida and Tennessee aren’t facing each other twice in the regular season.

Mike Rosario scored 16 points, Patric Young added 15 and Casey Prather had 10 for Florida (22-5, 12-3). The Gators were playing without injured forward Will Yeguette (knee) and guard Michael Frazier II (concussion).

“I feel like we expected to win this game,” Stokes said. “After the game, I didn’t even get that sort of ‘upset’ feeling. ... I felt coming into these games we expect to win. I’m celebrating because we won. I’m happy we won, but those are our expectations.”

Sports, Pages 24 on 02/27/2013