Did Volunteers need that Kentucky loss? Maybe.

Rick Barnes walked into Tennessee’s film session Sunday afternoon with a question for his players.

“Now, do you feel any different today than you did two days ago or a week ago when we had won a lot of games in a row?”

Barnes asked his players after rewatching the 86-69 thumping at No. 4 Kentucky on Saturday.

Jordan Bone stepped in with what Barnes labeled “one of the most mature answers I ever heard.”

“He said, ‘Yeah, Coach, I do feel different because I’m really excited about going to practice tomorrow,’” Barnes said. “That’s what he said: ‘I’m excited about practice. I know we’ve got to get better, and you’ve been saying it.’

“That was one of the most mature things I’ve heard from anybody in a long, long time.”

Sunday brought a reckoning for the No. 5 Vols (23-2, 11-1 SEC), who lost for the first time since Nov. 23 and had a 19game winning streak snapped. Their reign as the No. 1 team in the country ended after four weeks. They’re the No. 5 team now – their lowest ranking since they were No. 7 in the first week of December.

Barnes made sure his players understood what went wrong in the film session, where the same things stood out that he saw during the game: selfish offense, a lack of rebounding and iffy defense.

“We said, ‘Is this who we are? If it is, we’re not going to win many more games,’” Barnes said. “We’re going to go back to work and have the intensity and toughness and mentality that we want to be the team that we set out the beginning of the year to be.”

Tennessee players – specifically, Bone, Admiral Schofield and Grant Williams – expressed gratitude for the humbling they received at Kentucky. They all believe UT is in position to grow heading into the final three weeks of the regular season, where the SEC regularseason title will be determined.