Tennessee versus Kentucky brings out the best and worst of both basketball teams in a confounding manner.
The resumes of both teams affirm them to be worthy of their lofty national rankings and consideration for a No. 1 regional seeding for the NCAA tournament. They have ascended to their respective places, though, in spite of what each has done to the other in their two meetings.
On Feb.
16, the Wildcats routed the Vols at Rupp Arena, 86-69. The game’s one-sided nature inspired Kentucky fans to chant “overrated” regarding the then-No. 1 Vols. Kentucky coach John Calipari didn’t appreciate the gesture and did his best silence the sentiment.
Calipari’s postgame comments on Saturday indicated that he remembered that moment. The Vols flipped the script in the rematch at Thompson-Boling Arena, taking charge in the first half and storming to a 71-52 victory that a “Remember Rupp” look and feel to it.
“It’s amazing,” Calipari said. “Now they will say that we aren’t that good. When we beat them they said they aren’t that good.”
Calipari’s best stab at attribution for such thinking was to say: “This is college basketball.”
UT coach Rick Barnes seemed stumped by the disparity in results after Saturday’s game. During his press conference on Monday, he took another extended crack at it with a reply that acknowledged the strength of both teams as well as the vagaries of competition and human nature.
That said, he was no less stumped.
“I expected both of them to be close, hard-fought games,” he said.
During my 30 years of covering the Lady Vols, I remember a time in the mid-1990s when Tennessee and Stanford were two of the best women’s basketball teams in the country. Yet they were exchanging one-sided results with each other.
Stanford Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer reasoned then that since their meetings occurred early in the season, both teams still were in their formative stages. If one team had an exaggerated advantage – experience for instance – the other might struggle to respond and suffer consequences more dire than normal.
Such thinking likely applies to the Tennessee-Kentucky games, even at a later juncture in the season.
In the first meeting, the Vols hadn’t played a team of Kentucky’s caliber in weeks. Furthermore, their 19-game winning streak had stunted their development, particularly regarding defense.
The nature of the loss forced the Vols to take a hard look at themselves and face their weaknesses. Their response was a defensive effort Saturday that Barnes said, “we should be proud of.”
He suggested that such motivation now will swing back toward the Wildcats.
“They will go back and it will make them better,” Barnes said. “They will get better because we have gotten better defensively since the Kentucky game at Rupp Arena. We came back and realized we had to get better defensively.”
Kentucky also will get healthy. Forward Reid Travis, who played an important role in the first meeting, missed Saturday’s game with a knee injury. Calipari didn’t use that as an excuse, saying Tennessee deserved the victory and that the younger Wildcats played “like a deer in the headlights.”
Still, he conceded that Travis’ absence was compounded by PJ Washington’s early foul trouble.
“As soon as I saw how it started and when PJ got his second foul I was like ‘OK how do I make this close?’ ‘’ Calipari said.
The teams could meet in the semifinals of the SEC tournament in Nashville later this month. Travis likely will back by then. Both teams will be better for the shared experiences with each other.
Round three could bring out the best in both.
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Dan Fleser is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri who covered University of Tennessee athletics for the Knoxville News Sentinel from 1988-2019. He can be reached at danfleser3@gmail.com