KNOXVILLE -- Saturday conference games at home have been unkind to Tennessee this basketball season.
Texas A&M's rudeness to the Volunteers goes back a little further.
The Aggies again confounded Tennessee on the court, as the visitors opened the second half with a 20-5 run and held on amid a late flurry from the Vols to notch a 67-61 win Saturday afternoon in a lively Thompson-Boling Arena.
"I've said a lot of times that our team is mature for the inexperience and the youthfulness that we have, but I don't think we played like a mature team today," first-year Vols coach Donnie Tyndall said. "That falls on my shoulders. I don't like using that word 'complacency,' but we came out at the beginning of the game exactly like that.
"We'll have to learn from the film room and hopefully get our mentality back to where we're on edge every single game, because like we've said, with our margin of error and our lack of depth and some of the deficiencies we have, if we aren't on razor's edge and playing with attention to detail every night, we can't win, no matter who we play."
After the second home loss in SEC play, Tennessee guards Josh Richardson and Kevin Punter were hesitant to agree with Tyndall's assessment that there was complacency from the Vols' rise to second in the Southeastern Conference standings, but both acknowledged that better effort was needed.
"I didn't really feel it," Richardson said, "but once the game got to going, I didn't think we were playing as hard as we should have been."
Tennessee guard Armani Moore (4) and Texas A&M guard Alex Caruso (21), left, struggle for a loose ball during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville on Saturday. Texas A&M won 67-61."I'm not going to say Coach is wrong," Punter added, "but for us, we just need to punch the clock each and every day and not get complacent -- not that we are complacent -- but just keep having confidence and keep doing what got us winning: playing defense, playing as a team and playing poised."
Coming off road wins at Missouri and South Carolina, the Vols (12-6, 4-2) had a three-game winning streak snapped, but Texas A&M won its fourth straight overall and third straight against Tennessee.
And this time, the Aggies used a decisive surge to start the second half instead of a late 3-pointer from power forward Antwan Space.
Despite shooting 25 percent and scoring a season-low 23 points in the first half, Tennessee trailed by only two at the break, but the Aggies built a 17-point lead with a strong start to the second half during which they made eight of their first 11 shots.
"We missed those three little chippies right there around the rim, and you could see our guys kind of drop their heads," Tyndall said. "Then we didn't get back in transition, and when we missed a couple of those, they had back-to-back transition layups when I called the timeout. Our team doesn't usually give up easy transition baskets.
"It kind of avalanched on us, but like we always tell our team, you can't let your offense dictate your defense, and I thought we did that the first five or six minutes of the half."
Said Richardson: "We just weren't playing very hard."
Texas A&M, which took No. 1 Kentucky to double overtime and won at LSU, answered every time Tennessee tried to rally and led 60-49 with 2:09 left when the Vols made one final desperation run.
Robert Hubbs and Richardson hit back-to-back 3s, but Punter, who hit a career-high five 3s and led the Vols with 17 points, saw his layup roll off the rim amid shouts that Texas A&M's Jalen Jones knocked it off.
"I didn't see a goaltend," Tyndall said. "He had a good look. ... It just didn't go in."
That would have made it a three-point game with more than a minute left.
"I was surprised that rolled off," Punter said. "I put it up there like I was supposed to. It happens. It just didn't go in."
The Vols made 11 of their final 19 shots in the second half, but the mountain was too steep to climb.
"We knew in the second half we had to come out and have more energy," said Jones, who led the Aggies with 18 points and nine rebounds. "Playing at home, they feed off their fans, and they like to press and get after it. We knew we just had to take it to a different notch if we wanted to win this game.
"I think we had a couple of stretches where they made shots, but we came back and made shots, too. That really helped us."
Texas A&M outscored the hosts 30-10 in the paint and shot 48.1 percent -- the highest allowed by the Vols in SEC play -- while Tennessee settled for 29 3-point attempts, matching a season high.
"We've got so many guys that haven't played on this level, so maybe some guys were starting to feel themselves too much or get a little happy," Richardson said.
"But we lost, so we've got to come into tomorrow ready to work."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.