Tennessee and Kentucky have combined to lose eight games this season and six of them have come in the past three weeks.
One team is going to experience a fourth loss during that span on Tuesday night when the No. 8 Volunteers battle the No. 12 Wildcats in Southeastern Conference action at Knoxville, Tenn.
Tennessee (17-3, 4-3 SEC) won its first 14 games and was the last team in the nation to lose a contest. The Volunteers have since gone 3-3 and are coming off Saturday’s 53-51 road loss against top-ranked Auburn.
Kentucky (14-5, 3-3) won 12 of its first 14 games before losing three of its last five. That includes back-to-back setbacks against No. 4 Alabama and at Vanderbilt in the last two games. Vanderbilt entered this week’s poll at No. 24.
The losses dropped the Wildcats into 10th place in the 16-team SEC.
Wildcats coach Mark Pope wasn’t happy about his team’s ball security during Saturday’s 74-69 loss to Vanderbilt.
Kentucky committed 17 turnovers compared to just five for the Commodores.
“We just kept giving them the ball,” Pope said afterward. “(We’re) one of the top ball protection teams in the country. There’s some spaces in the game where you feel like you have some confidence where you’ve kind of proven yourselves. But when you start leaking there the game gets super hard.”
The Wildcats played without forward Andrew Carr (back) and could be without him again on Tuesday. Carr ranks fourth on the club in scoring (10.9 points per game) and second in rebounding (5.6).
Carr didn’t even step on the practice floor between a 102-97 loss to the Crimson Tide on Jan. 18 and the game against the Commodores.
“He wants to play so bad and we were just kind of seeing a decline in his performance because there’s just so much he can’t do with his back,” Carr said. “Every game, it’s kind of like he just gets beat up so bad it’s back to square one, where it’s hard for him to walk essentially.”
Leading scorer Otega Oweh (15.9) has scored 21 points in back-to-back games. He has scored that total — which is his season high — five times in 2024-25.
Tennessee is part of a five-way tie for fifth through ninth place in the SEC after shooting just 31.5 percent from the field and going 4 of 22 from 3-point range against Auburn.
The Volunteers played winning defense — holding the Tigers to 31.0 percent from the field and 3 of 20 from long range — but needed a compass to locate the basket on the offensive end.
“We believe in our defense,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said afterward. “We struggle at times like every team in the country struggles to score at times. It’s not just us. It’s everybody.”
Zakai Zeigler scored 14 points but made just 4 of 15 field-goal attempts. Chaz Lanier (4 of 11, 10 points) was the only other player in double digits.
Lanier was highly productive in nonconference play and scored a season-high 29 points in the SEC-opening 76-52 rout of then-No. 23 Arkansas on Jan. 4.
In the past six games, the North Florida transfer has scored 10 or fewer points four times and is averaging just 12.5 points and shooting 30.5 percent (25 of 82) from the field.
“Well, he’s going to have to continue to move, cut, get open,” Barnes said of Lanier. “And if he doesn’t get some separation, we’re not going to be able to screen for him. … It’s up to us as coaches and him to understand the adjustments that he’s got to make to get open.”
The teams split two meetings last season with the road team winning each time — Tennessee won 103-92 on Feb. 3 and Kentucky prevailed 85-81 on March 9.
–Field Level Media
