LEXINGTON, Ky. - As the premier men's basketball program in the Southeastern Conference, Kentucky more often than not faces the best shot from league opponents.
Tennessee needed its best performance of the season to upset the then-No. 4 Wildcats last month in Knoxville.
In Tuesday night's rematch at Rupp Arena, the Volunteers probably turned in their worst performance of the season, and a 25-point loss was the outcome.
"I don't feel like we respected our opponent tonight," sophomore forward Admiral Schofield said after the 83-58 whipping. "I don't think we respected them enough in the sense that we didn't come out and execute our game plan. I think we disrespected our opponent by not executing our game plan.
Kentucky's De'Aaron Fox, middle, shoots between Tennessee's Lamonte Turner (1) and Admiral Schofield (5) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017, in Lexington, Ky. (AP Photo/James Crisp)"The biggest thing for us is we've got to understand who we're playing, we've got to respect our opponent and we've got to compete at a high level. We have a lot of guys that compete and we've got a lot of guys that have talent, but at the same time Kentucky's full of NBA talent, and we've just got come out and compete and we've got to play harder than other teams."
The effort and execution was clearly lacking from the start for the Vols. Six of their previous 11 losses were by double digits, but rarely had they been as dominated as they were in Lexington. Prior to Tuesday, Tennessee's most lopsided loss this season was by 13 points against UT-Chattanooga and Florida in games the Vols led for 30 minutes combined.
Tennessee's largest deficit this season was 21 points in a loss to Gonzaga in December, but the Vols rallied to make it a tight game with less than five minutes to play.
"I do think it's the worst we've played this year when you look at it," Vols coach Rick Barnes said. "I think there's a lot of reasons I can look at, and I've already let those guys know how I feel about it. But the bottom line is we've got five games left, and we've got a chance to win all five of them. We've got to do it, but if we play like this tonight we won't win any of them."
The Vols actually led for three minutes and 40 seconds against Kentucky, but they have led for a shorter period of time in only three games this season: Gonzaga (none), Wisconsin (1:15) and South Carolina (3:18).
"It's tough losing a game by that many points, especially this late in the season," freshman point guard Jordan Bone said. "We feel like we've got our groove, and losses like that aren't unacceptable. We've got to watch film, learn from this game and just get ready for Missouri."
Tennessee has lost three of four since winning four in a row and now faces a steep climb to get into the NCAA tournament. Home games against Missouri and Vanderbilt afford the Vols the chance to right the ship before a visit to SEC contender South Carolina, where a win would revive postseason hopes.
The Vols can't afford to think in those terms, though.
"We don't go into games talking about the tournament," Schofield said. "We know that we are a team that can definitely make it, but right now we know for a fact we've got to win four out of the next five or we've got to win five out of the next five. But that's not how we're going to approach this. We're going to approach this one game at a time, and we're going to come out and we're going to play together and we're going to execute and play inside-out basketball and just be aggressive. We've got to get back to playing like that team that's on fire instead of that team that, I don't know, it just seems like egos. We can't have egos.
"We're not anything in this league right now. We haven't done anything in this league right now. Maybe we've surprised other people because they picked us where they picked us, but we've got bigger goals than what others think of us."
Schofield wasn't the only one insinuating Tuesday's loss was a gut check.
"We put ourselves in a position that probably no one thought we would be in at the start of the season, which is good," Barnes said. "For our young players, they've got to decide right now how big of a slice of the pie they want. It's there, but this time of year you've got to take a win, learn from it and move on, and you've got to take a loss, learn from it and move on, too.
"You can't let it linger. You do that, that's how those longer losing streaks start happening, but we've got to have a better effort both mentally and physically going forward."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.