Life on the road can be tough, Tennessee must learn from loss
Life on the road in college basketball can be tough. Fifth-ranked Tennessee got a first hand reminder of that tonight in a 77-72 loss at Mississippi State.
It was a classic recipe for an upset. The Bulldogs were a veteran team, playing at home desperate to avoid an 0-2 start in league play. In fact, according to the ‘experts,’ it wasn’t that much of an upset at all. Tennessee was only a 2.5 point favorite against an unranked Mississippi State team coming off a loss at South Carolina in their SEC opener.
Against that kind of determined, experienced opponent at home Tennessee was going to have to roll out its ‘A’ game to head back to Knoxville with a win. The Vols didn’t come close to doing that.
In fact, after their worst half of basketball of the season left them in a 35-22 hole at halftime, Tennessee was fortunate not to get blown out of The Hump. The Vols followed that forlorn first half up with a furious second half rally and some next-level offense from Dalton Knecht that nearly allowed them to steal the game.
In the end though, the Vols couldn’t get over the hump. Tennessee managed to tie the game three times in the final 5:17, the last time at 72-72 with :34 left, but the Vols could never get the lead.
“That’s the most disappointing thing, just so inconsistent (in the first half),” Rick Barnes said after the loss. “And you think you’re getting there and then you take a couple steps forward and took a step backwards again. But I do not in any way want to take anything away from Mississippi State.
“Coach (Chris) Jans had his guys ready to play. And early in the first half, we just had some shots, again, had good looks at it, didn’t make it. Then I thought we started taking some shots quick where our feet weren’t set. Just again, kind of hope shots is what I call them.”
Knecht was just magnificent in the second half. He no-showed in the first half and finished with two points on 1-of-5 shooting.
He looked like a different person in the second half, exploding for 26 points on 9-of-13 shooting and nearly hauling the Vols to victory behind a superlative individual effort.
Zakai Zeigler kept his personal hot streak going as well. Zeigler was the only Vol to show up for the first half, carrying the team with 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting. He kept it going in the second half to finish with 26 points and seven assists.
Both Zeigler and Knecht played all 20 minutes of the second half.
The duo combined to score 54 of Tennessee’s 72 points. Together they were 19-of-33 from the floor (58%). The rest of the Vols were an ugly 8-for-26 from the field and 0-for-11 from three-point range.
With the fireworks that Knecht and Zeigler produced the Vols didn’t need a whole lot from other spots on the roster. Unfortunately they got just about nothing from anywhere else on the offensive end.
Barnes biggest frustration, at least with his team’s offense, probably lay in what he got from the two most experienced guys on the roster. Josiah-Jordan James and Santiago Vescovi combined to five points on 2-of-12 shooting.
No matter how good Knecht and Zeigler may have been, it’s going to be tough for this team to beat quality opponents when that veteran duo struggles to that degree.
“It’s hard. I mean, it’s really hard. I mean, it’s really hard,” Barnes said of winning on the road in light of their struggles.
“We expect so much out of those guys and defensively, they do a really good job, but they’ve been in a lot of big games and we believe in them with our whole heart. But it’s consistency. We got to know what we’re going to get, not just from those two guys, but from everybody on our team.”
The Vols’ offense—outside of the dynamic duo—wasn’t the only culprit in the loss. Tennessee entered the game leading the SEC in field-goal percentage defense (37.5%). Mississippi State came in as the 10th best shooting team in the SEC (44%).
The Bulldogs made exactly 50% of their shots tonight. (Weirdly they went 13-for-26 in each half).
Poor shooting nights for individuals and/or teams will happen on the road. But defense travels, and Tennessee’s defense did not travel tonight.
One thing that Tennessee typically does a good job of defensively is making life difficult on the opponent’s best scorer. That was not the case tonight.
The Bulldogs’ top two players; Tolu Smith (23 pts, 7-of-10 shooting, 9-of-12 at the line) and Josh Hubbard (25 pts, 5-of-10 from three), went off.
Smith, who was playing in just his third game of the season after coming back from a foot injury, was a LOAD inside for the Vols’ big men. Both Jonas Aidoo and Tobe Awaka fouled out trying to contain him, forcing Barnes to go with five guards in the final minute.
Smith’s ability to basically do whatever he wanted in the paint was a disappointment to the Vols’ head coach, to put it mildly.
“Tolu Smith had his way with our post guys, got his position where he wanted it, and just, he did what he wanted to do,” Barnes said.
“I would’ve thought that both of those guys (Aidoo and Awaka, could defend him), I mean, we know he is certainly an outstanding offensive player. But he just took it where he wanted to go, which, you know, those guys can’t allow him to do that. And again, fouls, he put fouls on us. But they did a good job getting to the foul line. But still, with the arm bar and the rules today, nobody should be backed down the way he backed us down. It shouldn’t happen.”
Tonight was a disappointment and a missed opportunity to start out 2-0 in league play with a solid road win under your belt. Tennessee missed out on that opportunity, but it’s hardly a disaster.
These things happen on the road in college basketball. The Vols became the fourth team ranked in the AP top-five to lose in just the last two days. These things happen. This isn’t to say that losses don’t matter, it’s just to say if you think this is a huge deal, you probably don’t watch a lot of college basketball (no offense).
It will be a huge deal if it snowballs and we see more basketball from this team like we saw in the first half tonight.
What’s important for this Tennessee team is to learn from it.
The offense in the first half looked a lot like last year’s offense that was susceptible to some long lulls. The offense in the second half—behind Knecht’s fireworks—scored 50 points. There’s probably some lessons there.
Tennessee will have to address the post defense. Smith is a really nice player, but the Vols don’t typically get abused like that in the paint. That has to be cleaned up. Overall the defense was very shaky tonight. Mississippi State shooting 50% from the field was the most shocking aspect of the loss to me by far.
If there’s one area where you probably feel pretty good about this coaching staff it’s on the defensive end. I’d expect that to get cleaned up.
The Vols used a heavy dose of full court pressure to get back in the game in the second half and really flummoxed Mississippi State with it. Maybe that becomes more than a wrinkle?
Lastly, whatever it takes to get Knecht going like he was in the second half, that needs to become standard operating procedure.
I get that scoring 26 points in one half isn’t going to be the norm, but the guy capable of doing that on the road against a high quality defensive team should probably never be held to single digits, as he was in four of the Vols last five games before tonight.
In case anyone has forgotten, Knecht is one of the most polished and explosive offensive players in the SEC. He showed tonight, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s capable of carrying the offense.
When Tennessee plays like it did in the first half tonight they’re not a team that would finish in the top half of the SEC. When they play like they did in the second half they can beat anyone in the country.
The challenge for Barnes and his staff is obvious, eliminate those stretches like we saw in the first 20 minutes and produce more basketball like we saw in the second half. Or maybe just find a happy medium.
The task of getting back in the groove and looking like a top-five team starts this weekend with a road trip to Georgia.
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