Rick Barnes after loss at Florida: 'We need some guys to be aggressive … the right guys’

Rick Barnes was repeating himself Wednesday night at Florida, saying the same thing he said after Tennessee was upset by Kentucky at Thompson-Boling Arena a little over two weeks ago. And what he said after the season-ending loss to Michigan last March in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Another team focused on defending the 3-point line — Tennessee was 2-for-18 against Michigan and went 3-for-21 against Kentucky — and the Vols couldn’t find other answers to make up for it.

“Their game plan was no different than anybody else we play,” Barnes said of the Gators. “They’re going to work hard at trying to take away the perimeter, force us into the midrange with certain players and see if they can make those shots.”

Florida took away the 3-point line, where No. 2 Tennessee shot 5-for-25 in the 67-54 loss at Exactech Arena in Gainesville. The Vols weren’t any better inside the arc, shooting 32.5 percent on two-point field goals and finishing the game shooting 27.9 percent from the field, going 19-for-68.

Zakai Zeigler scored a team-high 15 points for Tennessee (18-4, 7-2 SEC), but needed 19 shots to get there. Olivier Nkamhoua scored 11 points, but needed 13 shots. Santiago Vescovi had 11 points, too, but went just 2-for-12 from the field, including 1-for-6 from the 3-point line. Josiah-Jordan James had four points on 2-for-11 shooting, going 0-for-5 from the 3-point line. 

“We just, again, we’ve got to get better offensively,” Barnes said. “And what this game, as much as any game we’ve played, we’ve got to be connected on that end of the floor. The disappointing thing — we had some shots at it, it wasn’t that; I mean, I can look at what we shot and this and that — I just feel like we didn’t execute at all the way we wanted to on the offensive end.”

Rick Barnes: ‘We really lost our poise’ with shots not falling

The Vols had a season-low seven assists on the 19 made shots. The 27.9 percent shot from the field was the second lowest of the season, trailing only the 25.4 percent shot in the loss to Colorado in Nashville in November.

Tennessee trailed Florida 17-4 early, after the Gators went on a 15-0 run. The Vols had erased the deficit in the second half and built a six-point lead, their biggest of the game, only to give up a 13-0 run as Florida quickly regained the lead and put the game out of reach against an offense stuck in neutral.

“We just kept fighting uphill all night long,” Barnes said. “Then I thought we really lost our poise. We let the fact that we weren’t making shots (affect us), and we had some good looks at it that we didn’t knock down.”

The Gators shot 45.8 percent form the field and 42.7 percent from the 3-point line in the second half, scoring 40 points after halftime, with Colin Castleton (16) and Kyle Lofton (12) combining for 28. 

Castleton finished with a game-high 20 points and nine rebounds, shooting 6-for-13. Lofton had 14, going 4-for-6 from the field, 2-for-3 from the 3-point line and 4-for-6 from the free-throw line, to go with four rebounds and four assists. 

“Defensively,” Barnes said, “(we) had a couple huge breakdowns at the exact wrong time that you can do that. Going under on a shooter and he hits a three, then pick-and-roll right around the rim late in the shot clock. Those plays, you can’t give up.”

What has to give for Tennessee is the offensive stalling.

The Vols had a scoreless stretch in the first half that lasted seven minutes, one second and another that lasted two minutes, 45 seconds. After getting the deficit down to one, at 22-21, Tennessee went scoreless over the final four minutes, four seconds of the first half, missing seven straight shots while the Gators got the lead back to six.

Florida shut Tennessee out for four minutes, 38 seconds in the second half, turning a 46-42 deficit with 8:58 left into a 55-49 lead with 4:20 left.

Up Next: No. 2 Tennessee vs. Auburn, Saturday, 2 p.m. ET, ESPN

Barnes said his team needs more consistency on the offensive end. And they need more contributors.

Freshman wing Julian Phillips scored six points, shooting just four times in 30 minutes. Tyrkee Key was scoreless, going 0-for-3 from the field in just 13 minutes. Jonas Aidoo played 11 minutes and scored four points on 2-for-3 shooting. Uros Plavsic scored three points on 1-for-3 shooting in nine minutes. 

“We need some guys to be aggressive,” Barnes said, “and do what we’ve asked them to do, in terms of taking the ball to the basket. The right guys. Some guys, they’re game-planning hard for Santi and Zakai. They’re game-planning hard for those guys. We know that. 

“But the other guys, our post guys inside, we need to get a consistent scorer down there … we need somebody else (other than Nkamhoua). We need Julian, we need Tyreke Key. The guys that we played tonight, we need all those guys.”