KNOXVILLE - There was no way Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes could hide his anger and frustration.
The way his team opened a pivotal home game against its in-state rival warranted the tone evident during his postgame meeting with the media.
Vanderbilt punished the Volunteers for their lifeless start by jumping out to a 14-point lead and denied Tennessee's comeback bid in the second half of a 67-56 Southeastern Conference win at Thompson-Boling Arena on Wednesday night.
"I'm baffled and frustrated by it," Barnes said. "I mean, this time of year, you can't come out at home and play like that. I wish I knew (why). I've been doing it a long time, but I don't have all the answers, because I'm surprised by that. I just can't believe that we wouldn't be more focused.
"I think you've got to give Vanderbilt credit, because they understand what this time of year's about, obviously, and we don't, because you don't perform like that in a situation like we're in right now."
With its NCAA tournament hopes on the line, Tennessee (15-13, 7-8) disappointingly came out with no energy and recorded its lowest scoring output and worst shooting performance (29 percent) of the season.
After trailing by 15 in the first half, the Vols twice trimmed the deficit to one in the second half, but Vanderbilt (15-13, 8-7) made the winning plays down the stretch to record a third straight win in Knoxville, which the Commodores hadn't done since the late 1950s.
"You'd think in a rivalry game, guys would have energy, but I don't know particularly what it was," Vols forward Admiral Schofield said. "I just know as a team we didn't get the job done tonight. The energy level was low. We didn't come out pushing the ball and we didn't come out executing the game plan.
"This game is not on the coaches. It's not on Rick Barnes. It's on the Tennessee basketball team. We didn't come out with any fire."
The Commodores ran a designed play off the opening tip to get Riley LaChance a layup three seconds into the game and scored the first eight points of the game.
Luke Kornet's 3 gave Vanderbilt an 18-4 lead at the 11:15 mark, and Tennessee didn't reach the 10-point mark until Schofield's layup with 6:27 left in the first half.
Tennessee failed to score 20 points in a half for the first time in more than two years dating back to a February 2015 loss to Kentucky during Donnie Tyndall's lone season as head coach.
"I thought they were focused from the beginning like a team that knew exactly what they wanted to get done," Barnes said. "To be honest with you they didn't do anything that we didn't expect them to do, but you've got to give them credit. I thought we played like a team that wasn't very well-coached in terms of what we wanted to get done.
"On the jump ball, (there's) a player out of position to give up a layup to start the game. We knew they were going to double in the post. We knew they were going to do that, and Grant (Williams), instead of trying to make a quick move, held the ball and tried to make a spectacular pass twice. They turned it over and got going and we got in a hole."
Vanderbilt made the key plays down the stretch with Joe Toye knocking down a 3 after Schofield clanked two free throws and Nolan Cressler, a 46-percent 3-point shooter in conference play, draining his third open 3 of the game.
"I think you can go back to the last game," Vanderbilt coach Bryce Drew said, referencing Tennessee's 87-75 win in Nashville in January. "They scored pretty easy on us. We obviously wanted to play much better. We were very motivated to come in and prove that we were a better team than what we were at our place."
No stat underlines Tennessee's improved effort in the second half more than the Vols grabbing 16 offensive rebounds in the second half after grabbing only one in the opening half.
"You'd like to think this time of year with four regular-season games left," Barnes said, "that you start the game with that kind of energy and that kind of effort. We didn't. That's a simple question that's hard to answer for me, because if you did it at the start of the second half, why didn't you do it at the start of the game?
"I wish I knew the answer to that, but I really don't."
The fashion of Tennessee's fourth February defeat left Barnes perplexed.
"He knows that wasn't his team the first half that come out like that," Vols guard Shembari Phillips said. "He knows that wasn't the team that gets after it every day. His frustration that you'd seen was necessary."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.