KNOXVILLE -- It should be fairly easy for Tennessee's basketball team to turn the page from Saturday's 18-point home loss to LSU.
With the No. 1 team in the country coming to town, the Volunteers really have no other choice.
"It's a long season, so we've still got a few more games left," guard Josh Richardson said following the 73-55 loss to the Tigers. "We can't dwell on it. Especially with a team like Kentucky coming in here. If you're dwelling on today, it's going to get real ugly real fast."
Tennessee's best player is right, of course.
The Wildcats are the only unbeaten team left in the college basketball thanks to a roster of former McDonald's All-Americans and future NBA draft picks. Kentucky's average margin of victory in SEC games (15.7 points) is more than 10 points more than second-placed Ole Miss. Only four times have the Wildcats allowed a league opponent to crack 60 points.
After getting out to a 4-1 start in SEC play, the Vols have won just two of their last seven games, and one of those was the improbable comeback that led to an overtime win at Vanderbilt last week.
That game did follow, however, a narrow loss at Georgia the previous week, and though Tennessee came out very flat against LSU on Saturday -- the Tigers led 47-20 at halftime -- first-year coach Donnie Tyndall contests any notions his young team has hit a physical or mental wall.
Thus he's expecting them to be ready for what looks to be an impossible task.
"That's always the million dollar question," he said. "I forgot now who it was we lost to before Vanderbilt ... we lost in a tough game at Georgia. The same question. We responded and played well in a tough environment against a good (Vanderbilt) team. We'll see.
"We'll go back and watch the tape, get better in practice and roll it out there Tuesday night against the best team in America."
Tyndall called Tennessee's first-half performance against LSU the worst by any of his teams in 10 years of coaching, but the Vols responded to his challenge at the halftime locker room.
"He told us we know we're better than that," forward Armani Moore said. "It wasn't going to be up to him to go out and show everybody that we're better than that. It was going to be up to us. We took the coaching like we know we need to, and we went out and played. It was just too late."
The Vols played like the game was tied, and the crowd, for most of the second half, treated it the same way even though Tennessee never got its deficit below 15 points.
It looked more like the scrappy effort the Vols have given all season than the no-show of the first half.
"You just challenge your guys," Tyndall said. "You talk about all the things you've done. I said, 'How can we go to Vanderbilt in a tough environment and play as hard and as well as we did three nights, and then come out and do what we did in the first half?'
"Give our guys credit. I've said it all year: We have a tough, resilient. We're not the deepest roster or the biggest roster in our league, we all know that, but they responded in the second half. The way we started the second half was encouraging, but the hole we dug was just too big."
The mountain these Vols would have to climb to knock off Kentucky looks too tall on paper.
The Wildcats looked mortal in their last two road games, however, a 68-61 win at Florida and a 71-69 triumph at LSU. The Gators led eight minutes into the second half and were within two points entering the final 1:30. The Tigers actually led 66-60 with seven minutes left, but Kentucky scored the last five points of the game to win.
Of course, Kentucky's three road wins prior to those two were by 22, 15 and 16 points against Alabama, South Carolina and Missouri.
"I told our team, if we practice the right way and prepare the right way and play the right way on Tuesday, we'll have a chance to be competitive in that game," Tyndall said.
"But if we play like we did the first half (with LSU against) Kentucky, they'll beat us (by) a hundred."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.