CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Tennessee stunned No. 7 North Carolina and its energized home crowd at the Dean Dome on Sunday evening with a historic shooting performance in the first half.
The Volunteers made 17 of their 26 shots in the opening 20 minutes, and the 65.4 percent clip was the fourth-best for a half against the Tar Heels in their home arena.
Starting three freshmen, Tennessee showed no fear on the road in a hostile environment and reversed its trend of starting slow against top-tier competition.
“I just kept on telling my guys to stay poised,” senior Robert Hubbs III, who scored 15 points on 7-of-7 shooting in the first half, said after the game. “We’ve been in tough environments. That’s nothing to us. It’s just hype. We’ve just got to do what we do and execute.”
The lack of execution down the stretch is what cost the Vols in a 73-71 loss.
Freshman Grant Williams scored to give them a 68-63 lead with 4:32 left, but they didn’t make another field goal until John Fulkerson’s driving basket with 40.4 seconds left. It was Tennessee’s longest drought of the game, and it allowed the Tar Heels to grab the lead as the Vols managed just one point during the decisive stretch before the drama in the closing seconds.
Vols coach Rick Barnes lamented his team’s late-game defensive miscues, but the offense also dried up at the worst possible time.
“Certain guys on my team they don’t flinch,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where we play. You can tell by the body language. We’re around these guys so much, and I think I’ve got a group of guys, I watched it happen in Maui. When we got down there, they kept playing.
“I like that part of our guys, the demeanor part. I just don’t like the fact that we didn’t execute the way we have to coming down the stretch when there’s no reason not to.”
Inside the final four minutes, Shembari Phillips had an off-balance drive blocked out of bounds to prompt the media timeout, and out of the break the Vols ran a set to get freshman Jordan Bowden a wide-open 3 he missed.
“I’d let him take that shot a hundred times in a row,” Barnes said. “It’s a game of makes and misses sometimes. I thought both teams played hard defensively and there weren’t a lot of easy things to be had.”
The Vols then had a brutal possession in which Phillips dribbled out 20 seconds of the shot clock and Williams forced up a 3.
Tennessee had eight turnovers in the first half but was nearly flawless in its execution and crisp with its ball and player movement in running out to a 15-point lead.
“I wouldn’t say it surprised us,” Williams said. “We knew we were going to come in and play our game. We weren’t going to let their fans or their size rattle us, and we just knew we were going to have each other’s backs. In the first half we did a better job with it and cracking down and hitting guys, but we have to do a better job of sustaining that for 40 minutes.”
Tennessee made 10 of its 12 shots in the paint and drained a trio of 3s in the first half.
“I wanted our guys to do what we practice,” Barnes said. “We’ve told our guys all year long let’s shoot it. We ended up with seven offensive rebounds, but when you’re shooting that percentage, you might not get as many. They’re a hard team to get to the glass on. If you don’t go in there and get body against body you’re not going to rebound against them, because they go up and get it.
“I want our guys to play with an attack mentality, and I want them to be confident. We want them to take their shots, but we still want to be a better defensive team.”
The Vols host Tennessee Tech tonight and Lipscomb on Thursday before facing another top-10 team when they play Gonzaga at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Sunday.
“We should give everybody reason to believe,” Hubbs said. “We’ve been right there with everybody. We’re going to give everybody our all each and every game, no matter who it is.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.