Mark WiedmerNASHVILLE – The words came from Tennessee junior guard Detrick Mostella at the end of another frustrating Big Orange basketball defeat, this time an 86-76 loss to No. 8 Gonzaga in the “Battle on Broadway,” as this game inside Bridgestone Arena was marketed.
“Some of us were playing with effort, while some of us weren’t,” he said. “It’s frustrating for us. It’s very frustrating for our coach.”
Rick Barnes is in his second season as coach of the Volunteers. A year ago his team came from 21 down to beat Kentucky in Knoxville. A little more than a week ago, it lost by two skinny points at North Carolina after leading much of the game.
When the Vols give maximum effort, however overmatched they are in height and weight, they’re pretty good.
But at Sunday’s start against the undefeated Zags, who are now 11-0, most of the effort and energy the Vols need to compete against the best teams was noticeably lacking. They trailed 27-6 with just more than 12 minutes to go in the opening half. Had that pace continued for the game’s full 40 minutes, the Vols would have lost 135-30.
“I didn’t like our demeanor (before the game),” Barnes noted afterward. “We were really awful at the start of the game.”
Gonzaga coach Mark Few, a close friend of the Tennessee coach, said it should have been the other way. The Zags were coming off finals. They hadn’t played a game in eight days. And there was the cross-country flight for the Spokane, Wash., team that took no less than 3 1/2 hours.
“We traveled a long way,” he said. “Anytime you come out of finals, you’re concerned about losing rhythm. And we’re coming into a hostile environment where we were in tremendous foul trouble. But we got through it.”
Barnes believes Gonzaga looks like a team that could get through the rest of the regular season unscathed.
“That’s as good a team as he’s had,” Barnes said. “He’s got a team capable of being undefeated going into postseason play.”
But what are the Vols capable of? There’s clearly potential there for Rick’s Runts. Despite giving up nine inches on the starting unit alone, Tennessee was only outrebounded 42-38 and forced 10 more turnovers, but it also got blitzed 10-0 in fastbreak points despite being the quicker squad.
“We still have a chance with this team to do some really special things. We’ve got to have to have everybody playing their heart out,” Barnes said.
Despite missing eight of the 10 shots he took Sunday, point guard Lamonte Turner played hard, or as Barnes noted, “Lamonte tried harder today than he has.”
Mostella also played hard while leading the Tennessee scoring parade with 17 points. Grant Williams played hard while totalling 11 points and seven rebounds, and Robert Hubbs scored 10 points despite Gonzaga focusing its defense on him throughout the game.
But the Vols hit but 30 percent from the floor on a day when the Zags were hitting 54 percent.
Said Barnes of that stat: “When they needed a basket, they executed really well.”
That’s what good teams do, of course. The Vols – having trimmed that 21-point hole to four points (75-71) with 2:26 to play on a Hubbs jumper – did this, much to the chagrin of a surprisingly large crowd of 13,784 that ignored a frightfully frigid day (25 degrees at tipoff) to drive downtown and cheer its hoops heroes: missed free throw, missed jumper, missed 3-pointer, missed 3-pointer, made free throw, missed free throw.
Gonzaga now led by 11 and a mere 44 seconds remained. Game over.
“We could be the talk of college basketball right now,” Barnes said, “if we’d have won against Oregon, North Carolina, if we would have given ourselves a better chance here today. We haven’t found a way yet to beat them.”
No, what they found Sunday was a way to make people wonder if they’re capable of that, or if it’s merely a Tennessee tease, bringing both anticipation and frustration with equal measure.
“We didn’t come out with any energy,” Turner said. “If we’d had energy early, those runs we made late could have been leads.”
Maybe one day down the road they will be. Though Hubbs is a senior and Mostella a junior and post player Lew Evans a fifth-year senior, the Vols are excruciatingly young overall, starting two freshmen with 10 total underclassmen on the roster.
Sometimes those teams magically click. One day they’re attempting to climb out of 21-point holes. The next they’re building 21-point leads. This team could become that team.
Or it could struggle all season to win enough games to finish with a winning record and use the NIT to prepare it for greater glory a year from now.
“It’s one thing being talked about as a scrappy team that fights all the time,” Barnes said. “At some point in time we’ve got to want to be more than that.”
At least they do if they want to be remembered for great wins rather than great comebacks that came up just short.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.