Kevin Punter entered the locker room at halftime with just two points under his name on the stat sheet.
To that point, the senior guard hadn’t played well enough, and Tennessee coach Rick Barnes let him know it.
“I told him at some point in time he is going to have to accept the role that he is in,” Barnes said. “That’s what it is. He’s the guy that we have to put at point guard. I told him that if just did what he practiced, he’d surprise himself.”
Punter did just that, going on a 17-point outburst to lead the Vols on a 26-2 run that helped UT overcome a 16-point deficit early in the second half en route to an 84-74 victory over the Thundering Herd inside Thompson-Boling Arena on Thursday.
“I was just in attack mode,” Punter said. “The hole opened up and I was just determined to get to that space.”
The Vols (2-1) entered the intermission trailing Marshall (0-1), 38-35, and watched as the Thundering Herd lead swelled during the first five minutes of the second half.
Over that span, UT failed to score and Marshall rattled off a 13-0 run.
“We were sitting on the bench and the coaches said ‘We need to change it up on defense,’” Barnes said. “I said, ‘No, we need to score.’ We hadn’t scored by then, but I said the way we were going to do that was by getting some stops and getting out and going.”
Junior guard Robert Hubbs III got the Vols on the board for the first time in the second half with a layup. From there, UT rattled off 13 consecutive points in a one minute, 41 second span to trim Marshall’s lead down to 53-50.
And then Punter took over, scoring 10 of UT’s next 14 points. His three-point shot with 9:09 left in the half capped a 19-0 spurt for the Vols that gave them a nine-point lead.
“We have to know who we are,” Hubbs said. “Times will get bad sometimes but we just have to keep our heads up and keep playing. We had to pick ourselves up a lot. The leaders Armani [Moore] and KP [Punter] kept telling us that we have to find a spark because this was the wrong ball game. So we found the spark and we just starting playing off of that with our energy.”
The Vols continued to build upon their run, ultimately building a 12-point lead after a pair of Punter free throws with 2:49 remaining.
Marshall managed to climb back to within six after a three by Austin Loop with 1:28 left, but the Vols quickly built the lead back up to double digits with a few defensive stops and some makes at the free-throw line.
“We still have to learn to manage the clock at the end,” Barnes said. “We had the lead and should have worked it more than we did.”
The Vols had four scorers in double figures. Moore scored a game-high 20 points and Punter and Hubbs added 19 — a career-high for Hubbs. Senior guard Devon Baulkman scored 13 points. Senior forward Derek Reese chipped in with a career-high 13 rebounds.
Stevie Browning and Ryan Taylor led the way for Marshall, scoring 18 points apiece. Three other Thundering Herd members scored in double figures as well.
Thursday marked the first time the Vols have overcome a 15-point deficit since they erased a 17-point deficit in a win over Vanderbilt on Jan. 15, 2011.
“We put ourselves in a hole, but we got out of it,” Punter said. “It was scary. That’s never what any team wants is to dig yourself out of a hole you put yourself in, but we climbed out and got a win at home.”
