Tennessee solidly started its game against Kentucky, leading 47-33 at the end of the first half. Still, they would blow the lead in the second half, falling to Kentucky 74-71. The game was a tale of two halves, as Tennessee fell apart in the second half.
The team will make the NCAA tournament and have national title hopes, but it would take a fantasy condition for them to win it all, according to their head coach, Rick Barnes, per Ben McKee of 247Sports.
“Well, if we can put the first two halves of both of these games together, we'd probably win the national championship. But we haven't, and in the first half, that happens. If it had been the other way, I wouldn't have been real concerned about it. I wouldn't have been with that much time left because we would have obviously made the adjustments that Mark (Pope) made and try to close that down. But, mean, it was a hard-played game. Both teams played really, really hard, and both teams are really good basketball teams,” Barnes said after the game.
This has been a common theme from Tennessee this year, including from Nate Ament. Ament scored 19 points in the first half, including four three-pointers and 11 straight points at one point. He finished the game with just 29 points and struggled with consistency in the second half.
“Well, obviously, with the way we made shots in the first half, you knew they were going to put more emphasis on the perimeter with Ja'Kobi (Gillespie) and Nate (Ament). And we were getting what we wanted in the middle ball screen, we just didn't finish it. And at that point in time, we needed more from our post guys. But I thought both teams played really hard. Not a lot of easy baskets out there in the second half. They drove the ball really hard at us in the last couple minutes. I thought we should have been doing that more, but still we were getting the looks out of the middle ball screen, but came up empty on them,” Barnes added about the differences between the two periods.
With the loss, Tennessee dropped to 16-7 on the season and 6-4 in conference play. They will hit the road again for their next game, visiting Mississippi State on Wednesday.
