PHILADELPHIA — Shades of horror presented themselves in Xfinity Mobile Arena. Tennessee basketball did it against Kentucky twice. It did it against Kansas, Missouri and Alabama, too.

A second-half lead has not been safe with the Vols this season. And when a once-nine-point lead turned into a one-point deficit with 2:03 to go, things were different.

“If we didn’t hold it this time, we were going home,” freshman guard Amari Evans said.

Tennessee didn’t want to go home. It certainly didn’t want to do it in Rocky Balboa’s city, using Apollo Creed’s “there is no tomorrow” one-liner movie clip to prevail over Virginia, 79-72.

After the Cavaliers took a 71-70 lead in the closing minutes, Tennessee outscored Virginia 8-1 and came up with timely defensive stops. The Cavaliers went 0-for-6 from the field after taking the lead. The Vols went 9-for-10 from the free-throw line to seal the win.

“If we want to win, we have to have that level of intensity on defense, and it just kind of stuck,” defensive specialist Bishop Boswell, who also recorded a career-high nine assists and four 3-pointers, said.

It’s a conversation that began at the break when the Vols led 36-31.

“We emphasized coming in at halftime that we’ve been here before,” forward Jaylen Carey said. “We’ve given up leads like this before, and we don’t want it to happen tonight. We didn’t want to go out like that, with something that we’ve repetitively done in the past. 
So just changing the narrative and being better.”

Still, they did everything in their power to lose the game in the same ways they blew five double-digit leads this season. They took a nine-point lead with 10:31 to go, then turned the ball over six times from that point on.

Ja’Kobi Gillespie committed three turnovers in the last five minutes of the game, including a costly giveaway with 2:12 to go that led to Thijs De Ridder’s leading 3-pointer on the other end.

It’s a familiar boat that Gillespie has been in this season, where his late-game turnovers haunted the Vols in losses. His lackadaisical pass with 19 seconds remaining against Kentucky in Knoxville led to a Collin Chandler steal and Otega Oweh dunk to push the Wildcats ahead from a 17-point deficit.

It didn’t hurt Tennessee as badly this time. Why?

“We’ve been in a lot of situations like that,” Boswell said. “We’ve won a lot of games like this, and we’ve lost some that we were able to learn from.”

But more importantly.

“We didn’t want to go home,” Gillespie said. “We’ve been through a lot. We worked super hard to get to this moment. So I think just locking in defensively and not wanting to go home.”
That learning curve is accelerated in March when every game is staring down the tombstone. The final two minutes were a testament to how Tennessee has handled the previous 33 games of the season.

Tennessee’s final six defensive possessions of the game after falling behind with two minutes to go:

• Felix Okpara defensive stand on guard Dallin Hall, pulling down the rebound in traffic
• Ament contest on a reverse layup by Jacari White
•  Gillespie layup contest on a driving Chance Mallory
• Favorable airball on a wide-open corner three from White, rebounded by Gillespie
• Okpara locks down De Ridder on an inbounds, forcing Hall to throw the ball away for a turnover 
• Desperation miss by White from three, followed by a contested layup that missed at the buzzer

“We had so many situations in practice where we practiced that, down one, down three with two minutes left, three minutes left,” guard Ethan Burg said.
”But that’s something our coaches have prepared us for this, man. We knew it’s March. Every game going to be a close game. 
So you just got to go out there and the mentally strongest team, I think, usually wins. We don’t lack talent on his team. So the mental toughness and the resilience we show, that’s what I felt like made us win this game.”

Being prepared for the situation was the easiest way to overcome adversity. Sitting in the position the Vols were with 2:03 remaining on Sunday is a place they’ve been many times this season — and execution wins.

“At this point, it’s second nature,” Evans said. “We know what’s going to happen. They’re going to hit shots. We going to hit shots. It just comes down to who going to execute, who going to rebound, and big-time players make big-time plays.”

Okpara was that big-time player for the Vols in the final two minutes. His defensive prowess — and ability to switch onto players one through five — shone when the Vols needed it most.

That impact won’t show up in the stats, but neither will the Vols’ why, which is to play another day.

“I don’t want this team to stop playing,” Okpara said. “I want to keep going.
I want to keep playing with these guys.”

“Being able to do that, that’s the magic of that, man,” Burg said. “And the will of these guys, man. They want to go as far as they can. We want to spend more time with each other. We enjoy being around each other — we’re all a big family. 
So it’s a blessing, and I really, really hope that we going to keep dancing, man.”

The dance will shuffle to Chicago for the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for Tennessee. They’ll get a tango with No. 2 Iowa State on Friday night in the United Center for a chance at the program’s third-consecutive Elite Eight appearance.