KNOXVILLE -- Josh Richardson grappled with both sides of the answer.
The senior guard and his Tennessee teammates gave all they could to go toe-to-toe with No. 1 Kentucky for 31 minutes.
It was the other nine minutes that had Richardson questioning if the Volunteers truly gave the best team in college basketball their best shot Tuesday night.
The top-ranked Wildcats stayed unbeaten and extended the best start to a season in their program's long, illustrious history by suffocating Tennessee with a concluding 18-4 stretch that turned a close game into a 66-48 win at Thompson-Boling Arena.
"I want to call it our best shot, but I can't," Richardson said, "because we just made too many dumb mistakes in the game. Not dumb, but stuff we know shouldn't be happening. Just a couple of breakdowns, and it's a different game."
Tennessee (14-11, 6-7 SEC) led the mighty Wildcats for four minutes in the first half and trailed by just four points with nine minutes to go.
Kentucky (26-0, 13-0) finally gave itself breathing room with a 10-0 run over four minutes to take a 12-point lead and was never threatened again.
"You've got to play perfect when you're playing a team like that who has a whole lot of talent on one team," Vols forward Armani Moore said. "You can't be blowing assignments. You've got to play together as a team. You can't take bad shots. It's just a lot of little small things that you just cannot do. Overall, I feel like our team did a good job of competing tonight."
Going into the game, first-year Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall targeted three areas he thought would determine if the undermanned Vols could hang with a team loaded with future NBA players.
Tennessee would need to hit at least 10 3-pointers, keep the rebounding close to even and limit its turnovers to 12.
The Vols matched the taller, more athletic Wildcats with 35 rebounds and even had advantages in offensive rebounds (19-17) and second-chance points (17-16), but Tennessee was just 2-of-17 on 3-pointers and committed 15 turnovers, which led to 16 Kentucky points.
"I thought our effort was fine both halves, and really the entire 40 minutes," Tyndall said. "We certainly made some mistakes, but from an effort standpoint, when you go get 19 offensive rebounds against a team of that size, length and athleticism, that shows you're playing hard. At times we wore down, and we weren't quite big enough to finish possessions at both ends."
Only five SEC teams have stayed within 10 points of Kentucky this season, and the Vols looked on track to becoming the sixth when Kevin Punter got behind the Wildcats' press for an uncontested layup to make it 48-44 with 9:09 to go.
The Wildcats then sucked the life out of the arena and the hosts with their decisive stretch.
After Andrew Harrison stole a pass near midcourt and dunked, Punter fouled Kentucky point guard Tyler Ulis shooting a jump shot with one second left on the shot clock.
Ulis missed the second free throw, but 6-foot-10 freshman Karl-Anthony Towns grabbed the rebound and converted a three-point play that made it 56-44 with 6:54 left.
"I'll take the blame for that one," Punter said, "because I shouldn't have fouled him in the first place."
The Vols made just two of their last 12 shots, a far cry from a first half in which they shot 54 percent against the SEC's best defensive team.
"I don't think we were executing as well as we were in the first half," Richardson said. "I think our aggression was there. But I just don't think we were running our stuff like we know how to.
"We played hard," he added. "We hung in there for a while. But I'm not huge on moral victories, so we still lost the game."
Tyndall was proud of his team's effort, particularly after the egg the Vols laid in the first half against LSU last weekend.
"I've said all year we have a very coachable, hard-working group, guys that are resilient," he said. "They don't hang their head or pout. That's why I was so disappointed with the first half of the LSU game, because that was the first time all year that we hadn't played Tennessee basketball. We responded the second half, but it was just too late.
"I thought we came out tonight, we came out and battled for 40 minutes, but we just wore down maybe the last eight or 10 minutes of the game."
The effort, whether or not the Vols are proud of it, simply wasn't enough against a team devoid of a discernible weakness.
"We lost," Punter said. "You never want to be proud if you lose. I definitely feel like we can stay take some positives out of this game and keep moving forward."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.