Wiedmer: Vols still learning how to win through defeat

Tennessee's Jordan Bone (0) drives past Arkansas' Moses Kingsley (33) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017 in Knoxville, Tenn. (Brianna Paciorka/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)
Tennessee's Jordan Bone (0) drives past Arkansas' Moses Kingsley (33) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017 in Knoxville, Tenn. (Brianna Paciorka/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)

KNOXVILLE - Befitting this second Tennessee basketball team coached by Rick Barnes, the Volunteers won almost all of the hustle stats against Arkansas on Tuesday night.

Rebounds? Check. Second-chance points? Check. Assists? Check.

Unfortunately, basketball is a game most often decided by which team puts the ball in the basket more efficiently. And by that barometer - whether it was 2-point field goals (50 percent), 3-point field goals (46 percent) or free throws (72 percent) - the Razorbacks were razor sharp in their 82-78 win inside UT's Thompson-Boling Arena.

Not that Barnes saw it exactly that way after watching his team squander a 13-point lead with four minutes left in the opening half - a lead that shrank to two skinny points by intermission.

"We don't value winning enough," the 62-year-old Barnes lamented after the Vols fell to 8-6 for the season (1-1 in the SEC) heading into Saturday's game at Florida. "We don't make enough winning plays."

It's not the first time Barnes has voiced this concern for a team loaded with 10 freshmen, redshirt freshmen or sophomores.

Nor should that dynamic necessarily be anything different than it is. Because it's not just that Barnes has all these freshmen. At least by high school rankings, they weren't exactly the one-and-done bunch that Kentucky coach John Calipari signs each year on their forced sabbatical before heading for the NBA.

These Tennessee kids need time to grow and mature and improve.

So even though there are moments of great promise - a 10-point win last Thursday night at Texas A&M, a near victory at North Carolina, a 23-point rout of Georgia Tech (which just beat UNC) - there are also those moments like Tuesday night, when Rick's Runts play like the undersized, inexperienced overachievers they sometimes reveal themselves to be.

So Ensworth School product and true freshman point guard Jordan Bone occasionally throws a no-look pass that looks like he didn't look to see the defender waiting on it, which was what happened with the Vols down 75-72 inside the final 40 seconds - a turnover that all but sealed the outcome, despite a later three-point play the old-fashioned way from UT junior Detrick Mostella.

Mostella finished with 16 points, but he made only 5 of 12 field-goal tries. But that was a better line than Bone, who missed 7 of 10 shots. Or Kwe Parker, who was 2-of-7 from the floor.

Even a marvelous effort from senior Robert Hubbs III, who had 21 points, seven rebounds and two assists, wasn't enough to overcome the scuds fired by his teammates.

"Too many bad shots," Barnes said. "We did some good things at the end, but not enough."

To be fair, Arkansas is anything but a young team. The Hogs have risen to 12-2 - a pace, which if continued, just might save coach Mike Anderson's job - on the strength of senior post player Moses Kingsley (the preseason SEC player of the year), redshirt senior shooting guard Dusty Hannahs and a nasty quartet of juniors: Anton Beard, Daryl Macon, Jaylen Barford and Dustin Thomas.

The Vols, especially freshman Grant Williams, did a nice job of holding Kingsley to seven points, but he had 10 rebounds, three blocks and three steals.

Still, Anderson was more than slightly impressed with the defensive job the 6-foot-5 Williams did on his 6-10 potential All-SEC player.

"The Williams kid, he never stops," the Arkansas coach said. "He's got a big-time motor. He plays big. Very active."

There's no question all these Vols are active. They hustle. They fight in the best sense of the word.

Yet as Hubbs said of the evaporation of that 13-point lead (39-26) that became a 41-39 hole less than a minute into the second half: "We had (Arkansas) on the edge. The game was ours. Then we gave them life."

He also said, a senior making a senior observation: "In tough games like this, you have to be almost perfect."

At Texas A&M, the Vols were almost perfect, maybe too perfect for a too young team still learning how to win.

For as the freshman Williams noted after this loss: "We acted like we'd done something already and we haven't. We were picked to finish 13th in the conference. Now we're 1-1 (in league play). We've got to learn to put our foot to the pedal (when we get the lead)."

They've got to learn, period. And Tuesday night they had to learn the hard way.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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