Tennessee basketball falls at Auburn 77-72: Three takeaways

Bruce Pearl still owns Rick Barnes. Tennessee basketball continues to look horrendous against below average teams despite a ton of talent. All of that came together on Saturday, and the Vols lost their sixth straight game to the Auburn Tigers dating back to 2018 with a sluggish performance on the road, falling 77-72.

UT and Auburn remained locked in a tough battle for a while before the Tigers pulled away to take control in the final three minutes. With the win, Auburn improves to 12-13 and 6-10 in the SEC. Rocky Top, who is ranked No. 25 in the AP Poll and unranked in the Coaches Poll, falls to 16-7 and 9-7 in the SEC.

Now, Barnes’ team has over a week off before closing out the regular season at home against the Florida Gators on Sunday, March 7. Pearl’s team will visit the Alabama Crimson Tide on Tuesday, March 2 before hosting the Mississippi State Bulldogs Saturday, March 6 to close out their regular season. Here are three things we learned from Tennessee basketball’s loss.

1. Red-hot shooting day was wasted by awful shot-selection.

If a Barnes team shoots 11-of-26 from the three-point line, or 42.6 percent, and goes 9-of-10 from the free throw line, they usually win. When his opponent shoots under 63.9 percent from the free throw line, missing 13 attempts, he’ll have an even better chance. But they shot 41.1 percent from the two-point line and passed up way too many good looks.

Josiah-Jordan James still coming off the bench hurt, but the shot selection was just ridiculous. They also passed up good looks for dumb passes that would be intercepted. Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer had 23 and 20 points respectively, but Springer had three turnovers. A shot-clock violation hit them down 10 with two minutes left. Things like that were costly.

2. Interior play was soft.

Yves Pons again did his part with 10 points, eight rebounds and a block. However, overall, Tennessee basketball was dominated on the inside, a big reason they suffered on two-pointers. John Fulkerson was awful once again with just four points, four rebounds and four turnovers. Olivier Nkamhoua and E.J. Anosike were scoreless off the bench.

Auburn out-hustled and outworked the Vols on the inside. They outrebounded UT 40-34 and had 16 offensive rebounds. The only reason it was that close was because Rocky Top lessened the disparity late after Auburn missed a few free throws and desperation three-pointers by the Vols opened up for more offensive rebounds. Otherwise, they were sluggish down low again.

3. Too many ticky-tack fouls messed up this game.

To be fair to the Vols, this game was called very close. That’s part of the reason they weren’t as aggressive on the inside as they usually are. Auburn shot 37 free throws to UT’s 10. Now, the fouls were called both ways. The reason Auburn got to shoot more free throws was because they were actually aggressive with the ball in the paint.

This cost the guards inside the most. Victor Bailey Jr. fouled out. Johnson had four fouls. Santiago Vescovi had three fouls off the bench. James played tough despite going 0-for-5 from the field with five rebounds, two assists, two steals and a block, but he played on the perimeter. Tennessee basketball couldn’t catch a break with guards’ interior defense, and that proved costly.