Tennessee’s Collapse Against Kentucky Was Bad, How It Happened Was Unfathomable

Desperately needing to hold serve at home throughout a challenging January schedule, Tennessee basketball let a 17-point lead slip away in an 80-78 loss against rival Kentucky on Saturday afternoon in Knoxville. That alone was bad enough. How it happened is all the more confusing and indefensible.

Kentucky scored 49 second half points, beating Tennessee off the dribble and controlling the glass to pull off its second major comeback in a week’s time.

“That’s what it was, it was a real collapse defensively,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said postgame.

An bad offensive Wildcat team torched Tennessee in the second half, making six-of-12 three-point attempts and totaled a 1.581 points per possession. Kentucky scored on 71% of its possessions while Tennessee got consecutive stops just once in the game’s final 19 minutes.

“Poor ball-screen coverage with not getting into the ball,” Barnes said. “And we went to different coverages, even when we stayed in their sets and guarded their sets in the end, we didn’t do a good job finishing out the possession, by getting blown by, putting us in rotation, then allowing them to score.”

“Just not being as active on the defensive end,” point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie said. “Not getting up into the ball on ball screens. Letting them come off and shoot it. We just gave them too many easy ones coming out the half.”

The poor first shot defense was bad enough on its own. Tennessee’s lack of rebounding made it all the worse. After grabbing just one offensive rebound in the first half, Kentucky totaled 13 second half offensive rebounds and turned it into 17 second chance points.

There were 21 rebounding opportunities off of missed Kentucky shots in the second half. Tennessee rebounded only 38% of them.

Kentucky hitting early three-pointers led to Tennessee flying by on close outs. Pump fakes scrambled Tennessee’s defense and often put them out of position when the ball went up, but that does not excuse how lopsided the rebounding margin was.

More From RTI: Everything Rick Barnes Said After Tennessee Blew 17-Point Lead Against Kentucky

“It’s hard to give an answer to that other than lack of effort,” freshman forward Nate Ament said. “Not being physical enough. Not wanting to win the game as bad as they did. It’s super frustrating and I can look back to a couple, if not more, possessions where I didn’t give the best effort I should.”

Credit to the young Ament for saying the difficult part out loud and owning up to his own shortcomings. But that discrepancy simply can not happen. That’s the case for any team, but all the more one with the build Tennessee has.

The Vols’ sacrificed shooting and offensive spacing when building a physical front line this offseason. If Tennessee blew a massive lead because of terrible offense, it would be equally bad but less surprising. It’s much more difficult to wrap your head around Tennessee blowing an 11-point halftime lead when its offense played just fine in the second half.

It’s a new look Tennessee team that is young and lacks experience in the program. Their inconsistency in doing things past Tennessee teams have down to win games is both frustrating and something this team does not have the fire power to overcome.

“Those guys (past veterans) win these games because they (are) not going to collapse on defense like that,” Barnes said. “I told these guys, we won a lot of games here, teams that are just competitive, tough, hard-nosed defensive teams. Rebounding. But they’ve got to take personally to get stops.”

Even after 19 minutes of poor defense and rebounding, Tennessee led by one point with the ball in the final minute. That’s when Collin Chandler stepped in front of a Ja’Kobi Gillespie pass and fired to Otega Oweh who scored on an and-one to give Kentucky its first lead with 34 seconds to go.

“I thought Nate was open and he wasn’t,” Gillespie said. “I threw it and I shouldn’t have thrown that. It’s just a bad decision.”

Fittingly, Oweh missed the free throw but Kentucky got the rebound. A Denzel Aberdeen floater with 16 seconds to play gave Kentucky a three-point lead and eventually the victory.

With the loss, Tennessee falls to 2-3 in SEC play. They have a week off before back-to-back road trips to Alabama and Georgia. The Vols, who have yet to win on the road this season, will likely be underdogs in both games. If they’re unable to pick up one win, they’ll end January in NCAA Tournament bubble talks.