LEXINGTON, Ky. — Deja vu for the team clad in blue.
Tennessee basketball raced to a 17-point lead against Kentucky three weeks ago in Food City Center. It suffered a slow and painful demise, giving up the lead for the first time with 33 seconds remaining to drop 80-78.
Fast forward 21 calendar days, and it was the Vols skipping to a 14-point halftime lead over the Wildcats. A passive, desolate quietus ensued, and Tennessee fell 74-71 in Rupp Arena.
The end result was the same. The fall apart mirrored the first — though head coach Rick Barnes’ view differed.
“They out-competed us tonight,” Barnes said. “I thought our guys competed for 40 minutes, but the last 20 minutes at Knoxville, we did not compete. So, to me, the two games are two totally
different games.”
No. 25 Tennessee (16-7, 6-4 SEC) shot 53% from the field in the opening half. It made five attempts from behind the arc, dropping the ball in the hoop at a 63% rate.
Nate Ament closed the half on a heater, making his final seven shots to take a 19-point effort to the locker room after starting 0-for-4 from the field. He scored 11 consecutive points for the Vols at one point to build a nine-point lead.
“If we could put the first two halves of both these games together, we’d probably win the national championship,” head coach Rick Barnes said.
A stretch of 10 straight missed shots doomed the visitors. Tennessee went 7:09 without a made field goal. It included a 5:37-minute middle stanza of the second half without a point. Kentucky took that time to shrink the deficit to two points.
The Vols got passive in the driver’s seat.
.
“(In the) second half, we were relying too much on the lead,” guard Bishop Boswell said. “Trying to take care of the ball rather than being aggressive and pushing the lead, maybe.”
Simple shots became sophisticated. Point-blank looks didn’t fall — Tennessee shot 3-for-7 on true layups, with a 4-for-13 shooting night from J.P. Estrella, where all of his looks came inside the paint.
His 1-for-7 second half proved as dooming as the rest of the squad. The Vols made a paltry six shots across the final 20 minutes. They sprayed in 20% of their attempts without a make from beyond the arc.
Ament dazzled for 10 points, and that was the bulk of the second-half contributions. Ja’Kobi Gillespie managed a lone point on 0-for-6 shooting. Twelve of Tennessee’s 24 points came from the free-throw line.
“We got to make shots at the rim,” Ament said. “We got to make free throws. Got to be mentally tough.”
Tennessee remained in the game until the end, putting the ball in the hands of Ament down by two. He turned around and fired off an elbow jumper that missed.
Another chance arose when Malachi Moreno missed the front end of a one-and-one. Tennessee, however, didn’t corral the offensive rebound, and it allowed the Wildcats to secure yet another comeback win — the second of its kind over Tennessee this season.
“We have not reached the ceiling with this team, and that’s a good thing right now that we can keep growing,” Barnes said.
March is peeking around the corner for a team that has yet to play its best basketball.
“You never want to peak too early, and I think we have a long way to go,” Boswell said. “It can be bad if you don’t have the right mindset, but I know this team, and I know my guys and we’re going to have the right mindset. I know how hard we worked. So, we’re just going to get back in the lab. We’re going to fix the things we need to fix.”
