Texas falls to No. 1 Tennessee in hard-fought 74-70 defeat

The Horns couldn’t make enough plays down the stretch to beat former head coach Rick Barnes.

AUSTIN, Texas — The No. 1 Tennessee Volunteers made 5-of-7 shots from the floor down the stretch and six free throws in the last 32 seconds to hold off the Texas Longhorns, 74-70, on Saturday at the Moody Center as former Texas head coach Rick Barnes beat his longtime assistant Rodney Terry for the third time in the last three years.

Four of those free throws came from Tennessee point guard Zakai Zeigler, who also made a key layup after a timeout with 59 seconds remaining for a five-point lead. Zeigler scored a team-high 16 points and had eight assists as Texas was able to limit leading scorer Chaz Lanier to 10 points on 3-of-11 shooting.

According to Barnes, the Horns came out with a plan to deny the ball to Lanier and play a one-man zone off of forward Jahami Mashack, who is limited offensively and also dealing with a lingering finger injury. Texas bigs defended screens effectively, particularly the middle ball screen that creates rim runs and lob dunks for the screeners, eventually forcing Tennessee to space the court and attack more off the bounce, which created the critical layup for Zeigler, also a necessary response to Texas effectively sitting in gaps defensively in the second half.

Off the bench, Volunteers guard Darlinstone Dubar supported Zeigler by scoring 12 points, hitting three big threes, and finishing a team-high plus-eight after entering the game 5-of-20 from distance this season and going scoreless in the previous three games.

The Hofstra transfer caught the attention of the Tennessee staff in the portal after a 24-point performance against Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium that included seven made threes — there’s proven shooting ability for Dubar after making around 40 percent of his triples over the last two seasons, but adjusting to high-major basketball has been a struggle.

“What he did tonight that I was really proud of was his in-game adjustments we had to make — he did it. He has struggled a little bit there, but tonight, he did it,” Barnes said.

For Texas, freshman guard Tre Johnson bounced back from two inefficient performances in his first two SEC games to score a game-high 26 points on 11-of-17 shooting and hitting 4-of-8 threes after missing his first nine attempts from distance in conference play.

“I feel like the first two games, I was more stagnant. I wasn’t moving as much and I feel like the more movement, it’s harder to guard me which also making other guys help and things like that,” Johnson said.

The game’s best sequence of basketball came in the second half when Johnson took a rhythm dribble into a transition three, Dubar responded from deep, Johnson hit another tripleon a step back, followed with a jumper, and then blocked a shot by Ziegler to send the game into the under-12 timeout with the Horns up 48-45 and the Moody Center crowd energized by Johnson’s exceptional stretch of play.

When Tennessee went to a ball-denial defense against Johnson, a back cut produced a dunk assisted by senior forward Jayson Kent.

The assist rate continues to be low for the Horns with just nine on 26 made baskets (34.6 percent), a result of an isolation-heavy approach by necessity because Texas doesn’t have the personnel to be pick-and-roll centric like it was last year behind the high-executing duo of Max Abmas and Dylan Disu.

It forces the Horns to make difficult shots consistently, especially challenging against one of the nation’s elite defenses in the Volunteers, but also emblematic of the entire conference as a whole.

On Saturday, that meant limited impact from senior forward Arthur Kaluma, who set career highs with 34 points and 12 made field goals in Tuesday’s home loss to Auburn, but only scored four points on 1-of-6 shooting against Tennessee, his lowest output of the season and only the third time that he hasn’t reached double digits in scoring at Texas.

Combined with the ineffectiveness of Kaluma, senior forward Kadin Shedrick only scoring four points on three shot attempts was harmful, but not as harmful as failing to come up with a single defensive rebound in 32 minutes as the inability to do so resulted in several second-chance baskets for Tennessee. The Virginia transfer was effective on the offensive glass, working hard and extending possessions with seven offensive rebounds.

The inability to convert those extra chances into points was a team-wide problem — one key determinant of the outcome was Texas scoring 10 second-chance points on 14 offensive rebounds. Simply scoring at the team’s rate of 1.2 points per possession would have produced almost seven extra points, enough to beat the Volunteers.

With junior guard Chendall Weaver not dressed and on a crutch with the hip injury he sustained against Auburn, the bench for Texas took a hit that couldn’t overcome the limited scoring contributions from Kaluma and Shedrick when senior guard Julian Larry, senior forward Ze’Rik Onyema, and Kent combined for nine points on 2-of-13 shooting, turning the ball over twice and committing six fouls.

The improved defense for Texas kept the game close, with the biggest lead for Tennessee was seven points near the end when the Longhorns went into desperation foul mode, providing a building point for a team still trying to find its chemistry in conference play.

“The first game was probably our worst loss and we’ve just been stacking it, stacking days and stacking practices and stacking games overall. So I just feel like us learning how to close out those last four minutes and learning how to win and cherish these possessions would be great for us,” Johnson said, speaking with a characteristic maturity that belies his youth.

Terry characterized the last seven minutes as closing time, a stretch that Texas entered with a two-point lead after a foul by Larry resulted in two made free throws by Tennessee. After Kaluma missed a three and Dubar tipped in a second-chance opportunity, Terry had to call timeout.

Because of the team’s composition, the result was an isolation opportunity for Pope that resulted in a made jumper for the Oregon State transfer, who finished with 17 points on 7-of-14 shooting, but only went 2-of-7 from beyond the arc.

Pope scored the next basket for Texas almost two minutes later, Dubar hit another three, Kent badly missed a three, and Okpara slammed home an offensive rebound. Kent then missed the front end of a one and one at the line, leading to a made three Tennessee that matched the biggest lead of the game for the Vols and pushed the win probability for the visitors to 84 percent.

In assessing the current state of the team, Terry echoed his star player.

“I think we’ve gotten better, but we’ve gotten better in losses — that sometimes happens in season. At some point, obviously, you have to have a breakthrough, but you have to make the breakthrough happen. We’ve had some growth, we’ve just got to continue to put it together for 40 minutes and just keep working the game and just keep working this season,” Terry said.

The next opportunity to work the season comes on Wednesday against rival Oklahoma in Norman as Porter Moser’s team prepares to drop out of the AP Top 25 poll from No. 17 after three consecutive losses to start SEC play.