Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall has a mostly new group of players to work with as he prepares to begin his first season leading the Vols basketball team.KNOXVILLE - If you thought Tennessee's basketball team took some solace in how tough it played a top-15 team in the second half of the season-opening loss to Virginia Commonwealth last Friday, think again.
Some Volunteers had a different reaction to the 85-69 loss.
"It makes me a little mad more so than anything," freshman forward Jabari McGhee said before practice earlier this week ahead of tonight's home opener against Texas Southern. "It shows that we can compete, and we should have did it in the first half as well. It would have been a whole different game."
At halftime at the U.S. Naval Academy's Alumni Hall, the Vols trailed the Rams 48-30, and the numbers weren't pretty.
Fourteen turnovers. Nine missed free throws. Only one made 3-pointer in seven attempts.
After halftime, Tennessee turned the ball over just four times and trimmed a 20-point deficit down to eight with less than six minutes left in the game.
"One thing about us, one thing about Coach (Donnie Tyndall), we'll never quit," said guard Kevin Punter, who had eight points, five rebounds and seven assists in his Tennessee debut.
"No matter how much we're losing by or winning by, we're going to keep the pressure on. We cut the lead, and we had a chance to win. We didn't get a few stops toward the end, but it's a learning curve, and we're going to get better."
Tyndall, Tennessee's first-year coach who declined comment earlier this week if he was meeting with members of the NCAA enforcement staff on Tuesday regarding the investigation into possible violations that occurred under his watch at Southern Mississippi, said the Vols have focused on the bad of the first half and the good of the second.
"Obviously the first half was ugly (with) way too many turnovers," he said. "In the second half I thought we relaxed and did a better job of taking care of the basketball. We were more in attack mode and getting the ball to the paint and getting some easier opportunities at the rim."
Freshman guard Detrick Mostella hit three of the Vols' four 3s on the way to having a 17-point game that was a bright spot even though he didn't record a single rebound or assist and had four turnovers.
"Detrick's a great kid, and we've talked about this a bunch -- he can score the basketball," Tyndall said. "We all know that. We all get that, but we've always talked about, he and I in meetings and in front of the team, if you're not making shots, what else do you to do to help our team win?
"It's got to be rebounding the ball. It's got to be deflections or steals. It's got to be having a positive assist-to-turnover ratio. Because of (his work ethic), he's got nowhere to go but up."
At this point early in the season, the Vols have so many new pieces and young players that their focus may be more about their progress than their record.
"You've just got to keep growing," Punter said. "You can't get too wrapped up in wins and losses, especially your first loss and us being a new team. You have to use that to make you a better team and grow and connect more as a brotherhood and a team."
It won't make handling frustration from defeats any easier, though.
"We ain't got nobody to be mad at but ourselves," said McGhee, who had seven points and five rebounds against VCU. "We're the ones playing. If we'd have played (the whole game) how we played in the second half, it would have been a totally different game, so we can't be mad at nobody but yourselves.
"We know what we've got to do. We can't just dwell on that and be mad about it. We've got another one Thursday."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.