Tennessee basketball: Vols keep falling asleep for long stretches of second halves

Tennessee basketball has struggled at random times throughout the second half of games this year. The Volunteers have got to fix that.

After an ugly 58-46 win over the Vanderbilt Commodores, Tennessee basketball raised many concerns among fans. Once again, as Billy Williford pointed out in his takeaways, the Vols had a horrible start to the second half.

After being up by nine at halftime, they only scored six points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. That follows Saturday’s loss to the Kentucky Wildcats, in which they were down by only six at halftime and then were down by 26 with 10 minutes left to go in the game.

But this hasn’t just been an issue the last two games. The Vols have been consistently zoning out for long stretches of the second half throughout the season, and it hasn’t always been just to open the second half.

It’s made games that should have looked like blowouts turn into modest victories. Take their six-game streak of wins by double-digit points before their loss to Kentucky. Against both the South Carolina Gamecocks and Florida Gators, they had 19-point leads in the second half. However, they only won by 12. The Vols were even up by 19 with five minutes to go against Florida only to win by 12.

That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it shows that the Vols have a bad habit of not keeping their foot on the gas in blowout wins. And such issues have also nearly cost them in other games. Let’s just go back to before this dominant winning streak began.

Remember how they needed overtime to beat Vanderbilt? That came after a 15-2 start. Now, in that game, they went to sleep in the first half, only to be up by one at halftime. That’s still a period of time in which they were lulled to sleep.

Then there was their game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. UT was up by 15 with a minute left to go in the first half, and they were up by 12 at halftime. Less than four minutes into the second half, they were already up by a point.

Simply put, Tennessee basketball keeps falling asleep for long stretches of games, and it almost always happens in the second half. Doing that against good teams will bite them, as it did against Kentucky. With no more easy teams left on their schedule, Rick Barnes has to work with his team to fix this issue before the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. It’s not something he can let go.

The problem is that it’s really hard to kick such bad habits, so you can expect the Vols to lose a couple of games during this final stretch because of this habit. However, the good news is that with so many good teams left on the schedule, they could end up being forced out of that habit. That puts them in great shape for postseason play. But if they don’t kick the habit, they’ll be eliminated in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament once again.