Nichols: Carelessness trumps consistency as No. 11 Tennessee plummets against Ole Miss

On Tuesday night in Oxford, Miss., 11th-ranked Tennessee collapsed in a way we had not yet seen this season. Now, the Vols must find some consistency going forward, or we’re in for another bumpy ride.

“You’re never as good as you think you are, and you're probably never as bad as you think you are. We're somewhere in the middle, probably. To answer that is the word consistency. Can we get consistent with it?”

Can we get consistent with it?

That was the question Rick Barnes and Tennessee (10-4, 5-4 SEC) asked themselves after Saturday’s monumental win over No. 15 Kansas, which arguably featured the Vols’ best half of basketball this season.

Four days later, the answer to that question is a hard no.

No. 11 Tennessee sacrificed 11-point leads in the first and second halves on Tuesday night, falling 52-50 against unranked Ole Miss (9-8, 4-6 SEC) in Oxford. The win gives the Rebels their first victory over an AP Top 25-ranked opponent since 2019.

Read that quote from Barnes again. He said that, despite their inconsistencies, the Vols weren’t actually too high or too low, more in the middle.

That wasn’t the case on Tuesday.

Against Ole Miss, Tennessee did its best impression of an investigation-bound UT football program that fell flat on its face right before National Signing Day.

In other words, Rick Barnes’ team was more sporadic than Space Mountain at Walt Disney World.

I know the influx of UCF staffers makes Knoxville seem more like Orlando North these days. Still, this sure seems like a weird way to acknowledge the sentiment.

Tennessee started strong, reaching the 23-point mark in the first 10 minutes. A Victor Bailey 3-pointer pushed the Vols to an 11-point lead before Ole Miss closed the gap to 28-23 at halftime.

The Rebels trimmed Tennessee’s lead to one right out of locker room, but a 10-0 Volunteer run seemed to silence UM.

Instead, Kermit Davis’s team came back for more. And Tennessee let the Rebels have it.

Ole Miss mounted a 19-4 spurt to capture its first lead of the night, 43-42. Tennessee tied the score at 46, but a 5-0 Rebel run seemed to finish the night.

Tennessee wasn’t done quite yet, as Keon Johnson nailed a 3-pointer, later drawing a foul with 3.5 seconds left. But Johnson missed the first of two at the line, Ole Miss’s Robert Allen connected on the other end, and a heave from Josiah-Jordan James missed at the buzzer.

Final score: Ole Miss 52, Tennessee 50.

“It was really disappointing—it shows that we’re still a pretty immature team not being able to be able to come locked in and get the job done against a very talented Ole Miss team,” said James. “We know we didn’t play to our standard of Tennessee basketball, and as a leader on this team and somebody that has been through it, it’s tough.”

It’s especially tough when you have a chance to win, even after this team compiled a season’s worth of mistakes in one half.

There were plenty of mistakes from officials, too. Several walks went uncalled, and Tennessee should have gotten the ball back with 3.5 seconds left after an inexcusable no-call when Ole Miss traveled.

Still, the Vols deserved to lose whether or not they got the whistle. 

Earlier on Tuesday, the Vols’ social media team — known for its wit, obviously — hinted that the matchup in Oxford could be a trap game.

Oh, how right you were, you ingenious content producer.

It's (hopefully not) a trap.

It's GAMEDAY.

— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) February 2, 2021

Ole Miss laid the trap. And the Vols dove in headfirst.

Tennessee sacrificed 16 turnovers on Tuesday, 11 in the second half. That’s the closest the Vols have come to their season-high 18 turnovers, which they experienced in back-to-back losses to Florida and Missouri.

“Some of the ways we turn it over is honestly just being lazy, not understanding how important the ball it is,” Barnes said. “Right now it just baffles me to think of some of the ways we turned that ball over.”

Tuesday’s turnover margin wasn’t the only ‘baffling’ thing, either.

Tennessee also went scoreless for 13 of the final 20 minutes, as the Rebels tightened down the stretch.

It wasn’t just that Ole Miss tightened, either. Tennessee lost its edge, too, as a typically charged offense stumbled off a cliff against the Rebels’ defense.

Ole Miss started the game playing man-to-man, but it began switching between a 1-3-1 and 2-3 spread after the first 10 minutes. That change alone flummoxed Tennessee, which became even worse as the Rebels grew more aggressive.

Ole Miss didn’t even switch to a trap tempo until the final seven minutes of the second half. Still, it evidently was too much for the Vols to handle. 

“Tough night,” Barnes said. “It’s just disappointing that we didn’t handle their pressure, because we just didn’t attack it. We were holding the ball. We have to attack that. As much as we talked about it, and not doing it, that’s just really disappointing.”

Moreover, Tennessee got just five shots — not five points, five shots total — from John Fulkerson, for a total of eight points.

“John has played enough right now,” Barnes said. “He should be consistent. Fulky had a good game the other night and we felt like — we were hoping — he would be back. But he wasn’t.”

Neither was James, who hit three 3-pointers in the first half but mustered just one point in the second period.

Yves Pons continued his strong streak with 13 points, and Johnson buried six of eight second-half free-throws to become one of just three Vols in double-figures.

Neither was enough. And those two misses proved awfully glaring.

Still, the loss isn’t just on Johnson — not even close. Tennessee allowed the Rebels to overcome two double-digit deficits, and in the process, Ole Miss outscored the Vols 30-10 in the paint.

“Just a really frustrating game in terms of consistency,” Barnes said. “I am not sure anybody had a solid game.”

“We just weren’t tough enough,” Pons added. “We had that game under control most of the night.”

Some might attribute the loss to mental toughness. Others might say it came from a lack of focus.

Barnes, never one to mince words, referenced both.

“I would put those two together. I don’t think you can have one without the other,” he said. “You can call it mental toughness or focus or whatever. But I would definitely put those together. I think with our team, those are issues right now.”

To say that is concerning would be an understatement. 

Tennessee’s win over Kansas proved that the Vols weren’t done yet, that they were back on track. Sure, we knew there would be more obstacles, especially with a healthy amount of SEC games left to play.

But no one could have foreseen the kind of drop we witnessed on Tuesday night.

For those who are old enough: do you remember the win over Memphis in 2008, as Tennessee became No. 1 for a few fleeting days? Then do you remember the Vanderbilt loss afterward?

This feels worse than that. Not in terms of emotion — just the shock factor and inability to answer how exactly this happened.

In the Florida loss, Tennessee got kicked in the teeth. Against Mizzou, the Vols couldn’t handle Xavier Pinson. And neither of those games featured a full Tennessee roster.

On Tuesday, though? That was the first time we’ve seen these Vols completely self-destruct, with everyone available yet no one to answer when it counted.

Tennessee may not have been focused in The Pavilion at Ole Miss, but Barnes will make sure that changes at Pratt Pavilion Wednesday afternoon. Of that, I can assure you.

After that? I don’t know.

I would say the Vols would bounce back, and I think they will — to some extent. Whether they surpass that mark to reach their potential is another thing entirely, though.

This team could still get to the Final Four. At this rate, though, it could also flame out in the first round.

No matter what choice you make or what you predict, Barnes remains correct: consistency is key.

Without it? Buckle up, and hang on tight.

Because as wild as Space Mountain is, one more out-of-nowhere loss could move the needle into Rock’n Roller Coaster territory.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Aerosmith as much as the next guy. 

But let’s leave the zero-to-60 speeds to the football program, shall we? That group is far more used to the whiplash.