Vols keep season alive
Vols shut down Auburn and Pearl
NASHVILLE — Minutes into the Tennessee men’s basketball team’s Southeastern Conference tournament opener Wednesday night, it became clear the Volunteers had put their four-game losing streak in the past.
They were playing loose and having fun — and they turned it into the program’s largest win in this event.
With key contributions from their three seniors and Detrick Mostella’s highest- scoring game in almost two months, the Vols jumped on Auburn from the opening tip and ran the Tigers out of Bridgestone Arena in a 97-59 rout.
“At this time of the year, it’s going to be about who wants it the most,” Armani Moore said after leading the Vols with 22 points and five assists. “We know we have nothing to lose, so why not go and compete and give it all you’ve got?”
The 12th-seeded Vols (1418) will try to replicate the effort against fifth- seeded Vanderbilt this afternoon.
The Commodores swept their in-state rivals in the regular season by a combined 31 points.
“We were terrible at our place,” said first- year Vols coach Rick Barnes. “They had their way. They played a terrific game. (In Nashville) we had chances, and we turned it over.”
The greater pressure will be on Vanderbilt, however, with the Commodores not yet an NCAA tournament lock.
“That’s our attitude. We really have nothing to lose,” Tennessee freshman Admiral Schofield said. “We lose, we’re done. We win, we advance. That’s just how we’re thinking about it, and one of the things that we have in our team is toughness, and we have a fight. I think that right now we’re just fighting. We do realize that we still have a chance to win it.
“I think we can still win it, but right now it’s just taking it one game at a time and focusing on each night.”
Tennessee jumped out to an 18-4 lead and never looked back. The Vols led by 22 at halftime and quickly pushed that lead beyond the 30-point mark early in the second half. Auburn ( 11-20) lost by 26 in Knoxville last month, but this one was more of a laugher.
The Vols shot nearly 59 percent, made 11 3-pointers and recorded 20 assists — their second- highest total of the season — on 34 made baskets.
In the locker room after the game, multiple players spoke of the team’s nothing-to-lose attitude entering the tournament.
“When you’re playing in the play-in game, I would think that’s pretty easy to figure that out,” Barnes quipped. “We did talk to them about (how) you always do have something to lose. You’ve got your pride, you’ve got your character, you’ve got your habits that you’ve worked on. We told them that we would be really disappointed (to lose).
“Where you can run into a problem this time of year is when you’ve got a group of seniors that very well could get senioritis and you’ve got a group of young guys who have been playing off and on throughout the year and there’s a gap in between, which we kind of have. I think it really falls back on the seniors.”
Those seniors led the way Wednesday night.
In addition to another typically reliable performance from Moore, Derek Reese chipped in nine points and 11 rebounds, while Devon Baulkman hit four 3- pointers in a 16-point performance.
“When I came in here yesterday, I started thinking about my sophomore year when we made it to the tournament and that run to the Sweet 16,” Reese said. “That experience was, I can’t explain it. I want to enjoy it again and do it at least one more time. It’s my last shot.”
Mostella’s outburst was unexpected given that the mercurial sophomore hadn’t scored more than 13 points since Tennessee’s win at Mississippi State in mid-January.
“He just did what he’s supposed to do,” Moore said.
Known as a 3-point shooter, Mostella consistently attacked the rim to get his 17 points.
“I was just playing with a lot of confidence,” Mostella said. “Like I told the guys before the game, we’ve just got to go out and play hard. At this point in our college careers, we don’t have nothing to lose.”
The 39-point loss was worse than any defeat Auburn coach Bruce Pearl suffered in any of the 201 games he coached for Tennessee over his six years as the coach of the Vols.
“It was a tough year,” said Pearl, who is 26-41 in two seasons with the Tigers.
The same can be said of Tennessee’s season, but the Vols are still playing.
“Don’t think you don’t have something to lose,” said Barnes, “because you always have something to lose.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.