Tennessee's offense Tuesday night went from "Go to Dalton" to "Wait for Dalton," and the results weren't pretty.
Dalton Knecht scored 31 points for the No. 5 Volunteers, but it wasn't enough as they fell 63-59 to visiting South Carolina. Tennessee's first loss inside the Food City Center this season also marked the first time the 6-foot-6, 213-pound graduate transfer from Northern Colorado accounted for more than 50% of his team's total tally.
Knecht's 11 made baskets in his 24 attempts from the floor were more than the 10 made shots by the rest of the Vols combined, with those transpiring out of 34 attempts for a grisly 29.4% clip.
"You start missing those shots," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said in a postgame news conference, "and now they're looking around and they're like, 'Dalton, we need you to step up here and do something.' They were waiting on him to make a play, and it's not fair to do that to him.
"We just lost our discipline pretty much all the way around on both ends of the court."
Compare that Barnes assessment to this following last Saturday night's 75-62 win at Vanderbilt, when he had the more upbeat comment of, "His teammates know what he's capable of doing, and they obviously start looking for him."
Knecht accounted for 42.7% of Tennessee's points against the Commodores and 45.9% in the 85-66 trouncing of Florida on Jan. 16, when he poured in a career-best 39. Barnes described Knecht's 39-point outing as "pretty impressive" before adding: "I thought his teammates started feeling it, too. They knew he was obviously in a good rhythm and a good place and really tried to get him the ball."
Santiago Vescovi scored 10 points Tuesday and was Tennessee's only other player in double figures, as the starting trio of Zakai Zeigler, Josiah-Jordan James and Jonas Aidoo combined to shoot 3-of-17. Zeigler missed all six of his attempts from the floor, including four from 3-point range, but the 6-foot-11 Aidoo had the roughest evening with multiple missed layups in a 2-of-8 performance.
It was the lowest scoring output by the Vols since their 62-55 upset loss to Florida Atlantic last March in the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16.
After Vescovi connected on a 3-pointer to knot the game at 33 with 17:47 remaining, the Vols went frigid, including their star. Knecht went 0-of-5 from the floor and 5-of-8 from the free-throw line in a nearly 15-minute stretch in which Tennessee managed just 13 points and fell behind 55-46.
Knecht erupted to score his team's last 13 points in the final three minutes, pulling the Vols within one possession on two occasions, but it was too little, too late.
"We're not going to beat them being that pathetic on offense," Barnes said. "They scored 63 points, and our goal is to try and keep people under 69. We were just a really poor offensive team tonight."
Said Vescovi: "We missed shots that we shouldn't have. If we make free throws and some of those layups, we're not having this talk right now. We're talking about how well we played."
The Vols rebounded from their first Southeastern Conference setback at Mississippi State on Jan. 10 by reeling off victories against Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Vandy, but rebounding this time around would involve taking down Kentucky on Saturday night (8:30 on ESPN) inside Rupp Arena. Barnes has guided Tennessee to a 9-8 record in head-to-head showdowns against John Calipari's Wildcats, but Kentucky won both encounters last year by a combined 19 points.
Tennessee, incidentally, failed to score more than 56 points on either occasion.
"We'll find out what we're made of," Barnes said. "Obviously it's not going to get any easier."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.