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Bad night on the bayou, four quick takes

Tennessee’s late season slide continued in embarrassing fashion Wednesday night. The Vols fell 92-82 to an LSU team that hadn’t won a game since Jan. 4. Here are four quick takes on the loss.

1 — Utter, second half meltdown — Tennessee certainly didn’t have control of this game at the half, but they led 46-42 and had just shot a blistering 57% in the first half. There was no indication that we were about to see what might have been this team’s worst 20 minutes of basketball of the season.

Tennessee was bad on defense for pretty much the whole night, but the offensive letdown in the second half was over the top.

How bad was it? With 4:00 left in game Vols were shooting 15.8% from the floor and had twice as many turnovers (6) as made field goals (3) in the half.

Tennessee got four late buckets in the final minutes to ‘raise’ the second half shooting percentage to 27.8%, which was ugly enough in itself.

They went through one stretch where they were 3-for-21 from the floor at one point and watched as LSU took control with an 11-0 run to turn a 51-49 deficit into a 60-51 lead with 14:25 left and the Vols never recovered.

At one point the Vols went 9:49 in between made field goals. That’s a drought of substantial proportions, but particularly against the worst defensive team in the SEC. One that had allowed each of its previous four opponents to shoot at least 50% for the game.

Robert Hubbs went scoreless in the second half, shooting 0-of-6 from the field and no one was able to pick up the slack.

The final 20 minutes were rough, but it was 40 minutes worth of bad defense which was the main culprit in this defeat. (more on that below)

2 — So many things to point to, where to start? Defense, that’s where — As we wrote in Monday’s 3-2-1, this team looked like they were running out of gas. Nothing we saw tonight makes us feel like we remotely need to reconsider that assessment.

The Vols never really looked like they were focused or playing with a high level of intensity on the defensive end, which may be an understatement, For the first 20 minutes the Vols were so good on offense themselves that it didn’t matter.

It sure did in the second half though when Tennessee couldn’t buy a bucket.

LSU shot 50% for the game and outscored the Vols 36-18 in the paint. Tennessee forced the team with the worst turnover margin in the SEC into just eight miscues and in general just didn’t look like they were ready to compete on the defensive end of the floor.

For the strongest evidence of the Vols’ lackadaisical defense, look no further than the fact that not one, but two LSU players set or tied their career high for points tonight, Jaylen Patterson with 22 off the bench and Brandon Sampson with 24.

Point guard play was better than it had been in the last two games but certainly not up to the level it needed to be. Tennessee still had more turnovers (14) than assists (12), but the bigger issue was perimeter defense on the other end.

Tennessee gave up too many drives to the basket and allowed LSU to go a solid 7-for-15 from three-point range. The Vols managed to limit leading scorer Antonio Blakeney to just six points on the night, but wasted that effort by allowing Sampson and Patterson to have career nights.

3 — It’s officially a late season swoon, yeah, I know, no kidding… — This was about more than one game. This team just hasn’t played good basketball with any consistency for a month now. I will be the first to say that I think that has a great deal to do with relying on so many freshman, but I’ll also don’t think that’s an excuse for how bad things have gotten.

They’re now 2-6 in their last eight games and it would appear that the NIT may now be out of reach. That’s a gut punch for a team that had legitimate designs on crashing the NCAA tournament just three weeks ago.

Those hopes were generated by a four game winning streak that seems like it happened long ago. The Vols have now lost three straight and five of their last six and Saturday’s season finale against Alabama certainly looks like a contest that could go either way.

Momentum is a tricky thing, and once it gets going in the wrong direction, it’s tough to reverse things. That’s even more true when you’re asking such a young team to dig in and fight back at the end of a long year.

No matter what you want to point to, punctuating this recent skid with a loss to an LSU team that had lost 15 straight coming into tonight is a bad look for a team that looks lost at the moment.

4 — Trying to find something positive… — Jordan Bowden returned from an illness that cost him essentially three games tonight and gave the Vols 19 solid minutes off the bench.

Bowden scored eight points on 3-of-4 shooting, including 2-of-3 from three-point range.

Grant Williams recorded a double-double with 16 points and 14 rebounds, and for my money was the only Vols who looked like he was consistently playing with the kind of energy and fight you’d like to see on the road in conference play.

Williams earned his 16 points, grabbing six offensive rebounds and working his way to the foul line continuously where he finished 9-of-11.

Jordan Bone showed some brief flashes of the player everyone hopes to see him become consistently, but he had struggles of his own as well, particularly on defense and with a couple questionable decisions on shot selection.

He did get back in the starting line-up tonight, finishing with nine points two assists and one turnover, so perhaps there’s something to build on there.

As a team the Vols showed that their collective nightmare from three-point range might be over. After making just 4-of-30 in the last two games Tennessee was 10-of-23 tonight, including 6-of-10 in the first half.

The Vols also won the battle of the board 38-33, but that was offset by their inability to defend LSU.

It was a bad loss, there’s no way around it, and very possibly could prevent Tennessee from even ending this year in the NIT.

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