Tennessee forward Armani Moore (4) is fouled from behind by Texas A&M center Tonny Trocha-Morelos (10) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game Saturday, Jan. 9, 2016, in Knoxville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)KNOXVILLE – Armani Moore’s return from a one-game absence because of injury didn’t come without its ups and downs.
Of course, the same could be said for Tennessee’s entire basketball team after the fashion in which the Volunteers suffered their most disappointing loss of the season against Vanderbilt.
After sitting out the Mississippi State win with a sprained ankle last Saturday, Moore had 14 points – his best scoring performance in more than a month – on 11 shots Wednesday in the Vols’ 88-74 loss to the Commodores.
The senior and the rest of his team will try to bounce back against 24th-ranked South Carolina today at Thompson-Boling Arena.
“I think he was fine with that (injury),” first-year Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said before Friday’s practice. “Watching tape, I thought he tried to do too much offensively early. We went three possessions where he missed two free throws, missed a layup and took a 3, and we can’t go three straight possessions where the ball’s stopping when it gets to him.
“But he’ll respond. He has all year, and I think he’s really pressing a little bit, simply because he hasn’t played as well as he wants to, even before he turned his ankle. He’s been around, he’s been through it, and he’ll bounce back.”
Moore is averaging 12.5 points per game this season, but he failed to reach double figures in four straight games prior to hurting his ankle in the second half of a loss at Georgia on Jan. 13. That span included one-point performances against Auburn and Florida and a six-point game against Texas A&M, and he’s shooting 27 percent from the field in Southeastern Conference play.
The Vols had multiple players forcing their shots against Vanderbilt, and that led to one of Tennessee’s lowest-scoring first halves of the season.
“We have to be a team,” Barnes said. “And the comment I actually made to our team (was), ‘If you guys think you can do this individually, we’ll get this result. We have to be a team.’ They know what we’re looking for. It’s just a matter of doing it. When we got down and things weren’t going well, we had too many guys trying to make something happen themselves.”
Barnes also hopes his team brings more energy against the Gamecocks than in the loss to Vanderbilt, when the Vols looked flat and out of sync at both ends of the floor from the opening tip.
“Like I told the guys, if we have that kind of effort, we won’t win any more games this year,” Barnes said.
“If you have the kind of effort we had the other night,” he continued, “we’re going to be in for a lot of long nights. Your effort, that’s something you don’t ever take for granted, because if you take it for granted, you see what happens the other night. We didn’t play hard enough, well enough, we weren’t in it mentally enough to win any basketball game. We saw the result.”
Though he has had 20- and 29-point games this season, Moore is capable of stuffing the stat sheet across the board, and the Vols are at their best when the 6-foot-4 forward from Atlanta is grabbing rebounds, handing out assists, being disruptive on defense and playing with infectious energy.
Tennessee will need Moore at his best to notch its first win against a ranked opponent since last January against Arkansas.
“(It’s) convincing him that he doesn’t have to do anything but be himself and do what he does best,” Barnes said. “He’s at his best when he’s really locked in on defense and when he’s really moving the ball and letting everything come to him offensively. When he starts trying to do too much on the offensive end is when he really gets down a little bit on himself.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.