KNOXVILLE -- Tennessee junior forward Armani Moore sat in the Volunteers' Thompson-Boling Arena interview room late Saturday afternoon, attempting to explain their 56-38 loss to Alabama.
Said Moore: "We couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong tonight."
Tennessee's Armani Moore (4) shoots against Alabama during his game against Alabama,on Jan. 10, 2015, in Knoxville.The stat sheet told of Tennessee's simple, overwhelming wrong. The Vols went 14:07 without scoring and hit just 31 percent of their field-goal attempts for the game. Unless you're No. 1 Kentucky -- which somehow managed to win in double-overtime at Texas A&M despite shooting 28.1 percent from the floor -- such ineptness usually will get you beat.
Especially when the other guy knocks down 41.7 percent of his field-goal tries and 83 percent of his free throws (10 of 12).
It's not that the Vols were woeful everywhere. They grabbed just five fewer rebounds than the Crimson Tide, turned the ball over only once more (13 to 12) and blocked the same number of shots (2).
But 14 minutes and seven seconds without a single, solitary point in the final half against a squad that first-year Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall labeled "an NCAA tournament team" almost always will get you beat.
What's scary for the Vols going forward were Tyndall's words to describe Arkansas, which rolls into the Boling Alley at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Said the boss of the Big Orange: "Arkansas is even more talented."
In some sense, almost every team still to play on the Vols' schedule is better physically than UT, except for the rematch with visiting Mississippi State on Feb. 3. If nothing else, they almost all are bigger physically, which seemed to be at least one of the Vols' biggest issues against the Crimson Tide.
While four of UT's starters are 6-foot-6 or shorter, three of Bama's first five are 6-6 or taller, including two who are taller than anyone the Vols start. Nor is it only height that must trouble Tyndall. The Tide started three players who weighed more than any UT starter.
"They're longer, more athletic," Tyndall said. "Their guards, they look like they are football players. ... Their length changed a lot of our shots. It made us shoot what I call 'hope' shots. If you'd said before the game that they'd shoot only 41 percent and hit just six 3s, I would have said we would be in good shape, but we just really struggled offensively."
Short-term, what the Big Orange Nation must hope is that this was an aberration, just one of those afternoons when the other guy was just more in rhythm, more relaxed, more focused, for whatever reason.
And Tyndall is right that Alabama looks like an NCAA team at the moment, its record now 12-3 overall and 2-0 in Southeastern Conference play, its three losses to solid teams all capable of likewise making March Madness: Iowa State, Xavier and Wichita State.
But the Vols whipped Butler and Kansas State and threw a scare into Kansas, which is starting to look like a Final Four team. Now 9-5 on the year and 1-1 in the SEC, a UT team that was picked 13th in a 14-team league in October still has the mental makeup of a team capable of reaching the postseason, if not the NCAA, then certainly the NIT.
To that end, as if to erase this loss from memory, Moore added, "It's not about what we did the last game. It's about the game we have to play next time."
But long-term, it's also almost certainly about an NCAA report into Tyndall's past at Southern Miss that could arrive later this week. The feeling from most insiders is that Tyndall's harshest punishment might be a five-game suspension, which might wreck this season but would allow his difficult rebuilding job to move forward with little damage.
But if the NCAA findings are worse than predicted, UT athletic director Dave Hart's task becomes tougher. Is this a fireable offense, given the wording in Tyndall's contract about NCAA wrongs at previous employment? Is the school willing to forgive and forget? Will the NCAA allow it that option?
In an interview with our paper last week, Hart said of his new hoops coach: "Donnie can coach. Donnie's a very good basketball coach. He put together a roster in a very late time frame and did a great job patching together a roster."
And all of that is true. But it's also true that the last two programs overseen by Tyndall -- Morehead State and Southern Miss -- have brought out the NCAA gumshoes for questionable behavior on his watch.
Maybe this is the week that brings that to a head in Knoxville and maybe not. But whatever the NCAA determines or whenever it determines it, there are still 16 conference games and an SEC tournament to play, beginning with a visit from No. 23 Arkansas on Tuesday.
And that can't come soon enough for UT leading scorer Josh Richardson, who totaled 17 points against the Tide.
"That type of game (full-court pressure, up and down basketball)," he said of the Razorbacks, "definitely plays into what we want to do."
What Tyndall has preached from the beginning is that he wants his team to be the tougher team, which it often has been. But possibly due to all those Bama basketeers masquerading as football players, he told the Vols before Saturday's game that they would not be tougher than the Tide, that "we had to play better than this team."
In the tough-minded SEC, that might best be the plan each game going forward. Whether the roster patched together on a very late time frame can achieve that is far less certain today than before the Tide rolled in.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.