Tennessee Vols roar back from 16 down to beat Marshall

Tennessee Armani Moore (4) and Devon Baulkman, right, battle for the ball withGeorgia Tech forward Quinton Stephens (12)  in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Monday, Nov. 16, 2015, in Atlanta. Georgia Tech won 69-67. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Tennessee Armani Moore (4) and Devon Baulkman, right, battle for the ball withGeorgia Tech forward Quinton Stephens (12) in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Monday, Nov. 16, 2015, in Atlanta. Georgia Tech won 69-67. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

KNOXVILLE - Rick Barnes once saw Tennessee's basketball Volunteers erase a deficit of more than 15 points.

Except he was on the wrong end of that one.

On Thursday night Barnes was on the correct end of a similar comeback by the Vols.

Armani Moore scored a career-high 20 points and Kevin Punter scored 17 of his 19 in the second half as Tennessee rallied from a 16-point deficit with 15 minutes left and defeated visiting Marshall 84-74 at Thompson-Boling Arena.

"I'm just happy we won," Punter said. "We put ourselves in a hole. We got out of it. It was scary. That's never what any team wants, is to dig yourself out of a hole that you put yourself in.

"But we climbed out, and it felt good to climb out of it and get a win at home."

The deficit was the largest the Vols (2-1) have overcome in a win since rallying from 17 down to beat Vanderbilt at home in January 2011. Tennessee also came back from 17 down early in the second half to knock off Texas in December 2006, when the Longhorns were coached by Barnes and led by Kevin Durant.

"The difference was we had to earn it (tonight), and back then they got a lot of home-cooking," Barnes joked.

None in the crowd of 12,341 were laughing when the Thundering Herd (0-1), picked to finish ninth in Conference USA, opened the second half with a 13-0 run to take a 51-35 lead five minutes into the second half as the Vols missed their first eight shots out of the break.

It appeared Marshall was on its way to its first win against an SEC team since beating Georgia in 1999.

"You're sitting there," Barnes said, "and I hear someone yell out, 'Timeout.' I'm thinking, 'We just came out of the locker room. What else can I tell them?' At some point in time, they've got to figure it out, because I don't want to be a joystick coach over there. At some point in time they have to figure it out."

The Vols suddenly came to life and embarked on a 26-2 run over a 4-minute, 58-second stretch that included three-point plays from Moore and Hubbs, Devon Baulkman's 3-pointer and nine points from Punter. His running bank shot gave Tennessee a 54-53 lead, and he hit a 3 on the next possession.

"We needed to make one or two plays to just bring energy," Derek Reese said after grabbing a career-best 13 rebounds. "Baulk really started it. He grabbed an offensive rebound, and we just started picking it up from there. K.P. hitting shots, Armani getting to the basket, Hubbs getting to the basket, everyone's grabbing rebounds.

"We started getting a lot of energy, and we could just feel it."

The Vols outscored Marshall 33-6 in a span of 6:50 after scoring just 35 points in the game's first 25 minutes.

"I feel like we're relentless," Punter said. "We've got our moments where we go in for a little daze for a minute, but if we had that (relentless) mentality for 40 minutes through the whole game, then we're going to be all right."

After missing practice Wednesday with an illness, Hubbs scored 19 points to set a career high for the second time in three games.

Punter scored just two points in the first half, during which Marshall led by as many as seven, on a pair of free throws with 18 seconds left, but he got going in the second half.

"I told him at some point in time he's going to have to accept the role that he's in," Barnes said. "That's what it is. You're the guy that we've got to put there. If you would just do what you practice, you'd surprise yourself.

"When he got going there, that was the way we work it in practice. I told him, 'I don't know if what we do works or not, because you don't ever get us in it.' Do what we've asked you to do, and I thought he did."

The Vols, who hit 23 of 28 free throws in the second half, led by as many as 12 and never let Marshall closer than six until the final two minutes.

"Like Coach says, we can't put ourselves in predicaments like that to where you give a team open looks and they start hitting shots, and you come down and don't really execute," Punter said.

"You can't do that to yourself, because you're just going to make it harder for yourself to win any game."

Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.

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