Tennessee and Kentucky have played 80 minutes of basketball this season against one another.
The Volunteers led for 73 minutes and 13 seconds and came away 0-2.
Saturday night’s 74-71 loss inside Rupp Arena marked the second time this season that the Vols built a double-digit lead against the Wildcats only to be victims of a second-half rally. Tennessee had a 14-point halftime advantage in Lexington, and the Vols led by 17 late in the first half on Jan. 17, when Kentucky roared back for an 80-78 triumph in Knoxville.
“It’s just frustrating,” Tennessee freshman forward Nate Ament told reporters late Saturday night after his 29-point performance transpired in a losing cause. “It really sucks to lose kind of the same way we lost the first time. In the last couple of minutes, the ball was in my hand, and I couldn’t come through.
“It hurts to know I had a huge part in this loss.”
Ament went 4-of-6 from 3-point range and 5-of-6 from the free-throw line Saturday, but he came up short on a jumper with 16 seconds remaining after Collin Chandler had put Kentucky up 71-69 on a 3-pointer with 33 seconds left.
The No. 25 Vols dropped to 16-7 overall and to 6-4 in Southeastern Conference play, and they are likely to fall out of the national rankings before their next contest at Mississippi State (11-12, 3-7 SEC) on Wednesday (9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2). Kentucky (17-7, 8-3), with eight wins in its past nine games, is certainly a candidate to take their spot.
“That was a great college basketball game with elite talent level on the floor making big-time plays,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said in his news conference. “Those were two teams really fighting it out, and I’m grateful to be part of it. The story that these guys are writing right now is awesome.
“It’s their story, and if you’re not on this ride with us, I feel bad for you. It may not be the normal way we do things at Kentucky, but it’s pretty great.”
(READ MORE: Vols lose another double-digit lead in another loss to Kentucky)
The Wildcats have set a single-season program record by winning three games in which they trailed by at least 11 points at halftime, with two of them coming at Tennessee’s expense. Tennessee’s 47-33 lead at the break Saturday marked the largest halftime deficit Kentucky has ever overcome in a Rupp Arena victory.
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes is now 116-5 in his 11 years with the Vols when leading by double digits at halftime, with this season’s Wildcats responsible for two of those setbacks, but he doesn’t view the losses similarly at all.
“I can take this one,” Barnes said in his news conference. “The one in Knoxville? Shoot, it took me two days to get over that. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can normally let them go pretty quickly, but we just gift-wrapped that one. This one was exactly how we thought it would be. Even when we were up, you knew it was going to settle in and come down to a last-minute play.
“These guys will bounce back. We have not reached the ceiling with this team, and that’s a good thing.”
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Given the history of these two programs, Tennessee could get another crack at Kentucky next month. The Vols and Wildcats have met 18 times in the SEC tournament, and Tennessee avenged getting swept by the Wildcats last season with a 78-65 triumph in their first-ever meeting in the NCAA tournament.
Yet the here and now of it is that the Vols let one get away — make that two.
“The two games were a little different, but it’s kind of the same,” Vols sophomore guard Bishop Boswell told reporters. “You get that lead and start to get too passive. I guess they wanted it more than us.”
Said Barnes: “If we could put the first halves of both of these games together, we could probably win the national championship.”
The biggest board
Tennessee racked up 46 rebounds to Kentucky’s 31, but Mouhamed Dioubate grabbed the biggest one of the evening when he corralled Chandler’s missed free throw with 7.3 seconds left. Dioubate quickly got the ball to Denzel Aberdeen, who scored the game’s final two points from the line with 3.7 seconds remaining.
Vols freshman forward DeWayne Brown II led all players with 12 rebounds but was on the bench when Dioubate gathered the night’s final rebound.
“That was my fault,” Barnes said. “I should have had DeWayne in there for that rebound. I’ll take that one.”
Brown was asked on the Vol Network how Saturday’s setback compared to the first loss to the Wildcats.
“To be honest, every loss is frustrating, because we feel like we’re better than every team we play,” Brown said. “When we step on the floor, we feel like we’re the best team, so every time we lose it’s frustrating. We feel like it’s unexpected.”
Pleasant texting
Kentucky honored its 1996 national championship team, which included Pope, on Saturday night, and several of Pope’s former teammates joined him at his news conference.
When asked what winning with the 1996 champs in attendance meant to him, Pope said, “It means our group text is not going to be so vile.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.