KNOXVILLE - Tennessee senior forward Armani Moore looked straight ahead, his face emotionless, his voice soft.
"Any time we hit, they hit," he said of Texas A&M's Aggies. "We couldn't pull away."
More importantly, the Volunteers couldn't put the Aggies away Saturday afternoon inside Thompson-Boling Arena. Ahead by 13 points in the final half and still by 10 with 4:13 to go, the Big Orange was finally done in by talent, height and savvy experience, shockingly falling 92-88 to an A&M bunch that might prove to be the best in the Southeastern Conference by season's end.
This is what championship teams do, of course. At home. On the road. At neutral sites, which is where college basketball is played in March, when it matters most. And the poise and pride the Aggies showed down the stretch against the Vols is often what wins at tourney time.
"Too many turnovers," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes lamented after watching the Vols lose two of their 18 turnovers in the final 2:15 while getting outscored 18-4 down the stretch.
"We got out of whack offensively," Moore added. "We made some terrible decisions down the stretch."
But this much is also true, these words also coming from Moore's lips: "We did a lot of good things today. We've just got to carry it out for a full 40 minutes."
The good things were better than good until those final four minutes. The Vols hit 11 of their first 22 3-pointers. They hit 20 of their first 35 shots overall. At halftime, their lead a comfortable eight points (46-38), they were hitting 55 percent of their shots from the field to just 38 percent for A&M.
At that moment, Wednesday's flogging of Florida looked no longer like a fluke but a formula. Rick's Runts could rule the SEC with Small Ball, running taller teams into the ground with quickness, speed and deft shooting.
It's not that Barnes necessarily had a choice. You can't just sprinkle pixie dust on your players and have them become Jolly Orange Giants. What Barnes inherited were long-armed guards with an eye for the basket and a mindset to out-physical their opponents.
It might not work every game. But it had flummoxed Florida for 40 minutes and tormented Texas A&M for 20. Perhaps this could be the SEC's new normal. At least for the remainder of the winter of 2016. Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. You can't catch me. I'm a flea from Tennessee.
But even as A&M continued to trail, the Vols' lead never felt as big as it looked. The Aggies start four seniors, and three of them - guards Alex Caruso and Danuel House and forward Jalen Jones - likely would start for anyone in the league.
As Barnes said of Caruso, who finished with 13 points, seven assists, five rebounds and five steals: "He's the kind of player every coach would love to have. He does so much to disrupt your game plan."
Indeed, averaging only 7.4 points for the season, he topped that Saturday in 3-pointers alone, bagging three of four. Averaging 2.2 steals, he made two in the final 2:14 alone.
"He just knows where to be," Moore said. "He's got a nose for the ball."
And House and Jones have a nose for the basket. After scoring 12 points in the first half, Jones finished with a game-high 27. After scoring 10 in the opening frame, House totaled 23.
"They made winning plays," Barnes said.
You can make winning plays and lose. Tennessee painfully learned that truth Saturday, much to the chagrin of the 14,907 Volniacs who poured into Thompson-Boling Arena hoping Rick's Runts could improve to 2-1 within the SEC rather than falling to 1-2 (8-7 overall) heading into Wednesday's game at Georgia.
The tougher question is whether the passion and purpose needed to play this way may wear down the Vols down the stretch, much as it seemed to do last year's team, a similarly depth-challenged group that lost 11 of 15 after a hopeful 12-5 start.
UT leading scorer and point guard Kevin Punter is averaging almost 35 minutes a game. Moore's on the north side of 32. Robert Hubbs III and Devon Baulkman are just south of 30 minutes a night.
Said Moore: "It definitely can get tiring on your body."
On the other hand, against an experienced Aggies team loaded with veteran talent, a team ranked No. 21 in the Associated Press poll, the Vols played well enough to win, watching a late 3-pointer by Detrick Mostella rim out that would have given them the lead with less than 10 seconds to play.
"Detrick Mostella had a wide-open shot that we'd love to have every single time," Barnes said of his reserve guard's lone missed 3 of the game. "It just didn't go down."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com