Tennessee players watch from the bench during the final moments of Saturday’s overtime loss at LSU.KNOXVILLE – At one point in the second half of Saturday’s Southeastern Conference basketball game at LSU, Tennessee was rolling.
Up nine with less than seven minutes to go, it appeared the fifth-ranked Volunteers were going to cruise to their biggest victory since knocking off then-No. 1 Gonzaga in early December and their best win since completing a season sweep of Florida two weeks earlier.
Then the wheels appeared to fall off in spectacular fashion as the 13th-ranked Tigers outscored the Vols 16-7 through the end of regulation, with a basket by Tennessee’s Grant Williams making it 71-all with 33 seconds to play and leading to overtime.
Even in the extra period, the Vols had their chances. They took an 80-78 lead with 18 seconds to go on a three-point play by Williams, only to see LSU score on a putback. Next came a questionable shot by Tennessee junior guard Lamonte Turner with three seconds to play, followed by a questionable loose ball foul called on Williams with less than a second left.
Javonte Smart knocked down a pair of free throws for the Tigers, who won 82-80 to drop the Vols to 24-3 overall this season and into a three-way tie with LSU and Kentucky atop the SEC standings at 12-2.
LSU’s Javonte Smart, right, falls while driving to the basket as Tennessee’s Lamonte Turner defends during Saturday’s SEC matchup in Baton Rouge, La.After the game, Tennessee coach Rick Barnes was unhappy about an NCAA rule that doesn’t allow coaches to call timeout from the sidelines, explaining he wanted his team to call a timeout prior to Turner’s shot to set up one final play.
“We’ve got to get the last shot of the game. Plain and simple,” he said on the Vol Network. “We raise up and shoot the ball way too soon. That’s what’s wrong with the rule; I can’t call timeout. These guys are playing at a quicker pace than they ever have before. We need to use a timeout, but I can’t get the attention of any of the players to do it.
“We take a tough shot, then end up being called for a foul, but I thought we made a couple of plays we can’t do.”
To his point, the Vols had some plays that were uncharacteristic for a team that prides itself on experience.
Junior point guard Jordan Bone, who battled flu-like symptoms in the second half and overtime, was called for an intentional foul while trying to prevent a breakaway layup by Marlon Taylor. There was the final sequence of the game, in which Turner took a bad shot and Williams made a bad decision by trying to take a charge 70 feet from the basket with so little time left.
But it shouldn’t have got to that point. The Vols led 64-55 with 6:44 to play after a Kyle Alexander 3-pointer – just the fifth of the 6-foot-11 senior’s Tennessee career – and seemingly had all the momentum at that point. But they made only one of their final eight shots of the second half and turned the ball over three times down the stretch.
The loss hurts for a number of reasons. First, had Tennessee won in Baton Rouge, it would have held a one-game lead on Kentucky and a two-game lead over LSU in the league standings with four regular-season games to play.
Second, with the NCAA tournament drawing near, a victory would have given the Vols a much-needed quality win. They currently have four wins that meet the NCAA’s top-level “Quadrant 1” criteria – at home against teams in the top 30 of the NET rankings, on a neutral court against top-50 teams or on the road against top-75 teams. In addition to the win against Gonzaga in Phoenix and the sweep of Florida, Tennessee topped Louisville in Brooklyn, New York, at the NIT Season Tip-Off in late November.
That means two of those wins came in Tennessee’s first 10 games this season and the others were against a team currently on the bubble for an NCAA tournament bid.
Tennessee is at Ole Miss on Wednesday, hosts Kentucky next Saturday and Mississippi State on March 5, then closes the regular season at Auburn on March 9. Those are four more opportunities for big wins that could not only help the Vols’ seeding for the SEC and NCAA tournaments but give them momentum for the postseason.
But senior guard Admiral Schofield, who scored a team-high 27 points at LSU, knows Tennessee’s opponents have the same motivation.
“There are a lot of teams battling for championships,” Schofield said. “They’re trying to set the tone for what’s to come in the NCAA tournament. You play a tough team like LSU – very talented, very long, very big. It was a great fight, we just didn’t come out on top.
“We’ve got to have a collective buy-in. Tonight we just weren’t locked in in certain aspects. We still fought, which is big time, we just didn’t find a way to win tonight.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.