To put a 73-69 loss to Arkansas on Saturday in perspective, I flip my diary back to Wednesday night in Gainesville.

Sitting courtside late in the second half, watching Tennessee and Florida flail at each other, you had to wonder how the Vols could possibly get out of such a hostile predicament with a victory.

Then a press-row neighbor elbowed me -- it was too loud for words -- and pointed to an item he had circled in UT's notes package. It said the Vols were 16-0 when leading with 5 minutes to play.

I looked up at the scoreboard. Just under five to play, UT up by a couple.

A quick reflection back over so many games Tennessee had closed out so effectively led to the obvious conclusion: Somehow, they would win that one, too.

They did. And so the Vols took the court Saturday 17-0 when leading with five minutes to play.

Still, when the clock hit five minutes against Arkansas, even coach Bruce Pearl knew the 15-game home-court win streak wasn't the only streak in jeopardy.

"We were popped,'' Pearl said later. "Absolutely popped.''

Popped translates to pooped.

He knew the supreme effort at Florida and the late-night travel home had taken a toll. He knew Arkansas, which had played at home on Tuesday, was fresher.

The Vols led 63-59 at the five-minute mark, but it would turn out to be a watershed moment.

Arkansas was on a run that had cut a 14-point UT lead to four.

But with 5:01 to play, C.J. Watson, about as reliable a pressure free-throw shooter as there is in the SEC, was at the line for a one-and-one.

The crowd of 22,543 was mighty glad of it, too. The bleeding was about to stop.

Only it didn't. Watson missed the front end, Arkansas extended the run to 15-0 and went on to get the win.

Down the stretch, it was the Razorbacks, not the Vols, making the key plays at both ends of the court.

You could say over the course of 25 games, one or two are going to get away from you at the end.

Not the Vols. Not until now.

They had been brutally, inspirationally efficient in the final minutes, when so many games are won or lost.

Someone always made a good play. Seldom did anyone make a bad one.

Saturday, Arkansas exploited UT's suspect half-court defense repeatedly down the stretch. We've seen that before.

The surprise was that UT's half-court offense was as flat as its defense.

After Watson's 3-pointer put UT up 63-49 with 8:49 to play, the Vols managed only one field goal the rest of the way.

"We did a lot of standing around watching me dribble or Chris (Lofton) try to make a play,'' said Watson.

"We weren't really moving, not trying to cut to the basket.''

"We didn't keep aggressive,'' said JaJuan Smith, who scored all but one of his 11 points in the first half.

Dane Bradshaw, author of so many pivotal plays at crunch time, sensed something was missing before crunch time arrived.

"Even when we started to get the double-digit lead, we were playing a little sloppy,'' he said. "They were still getting easy buckets.

"We just failed to get all 22,000 on their feet like they wanted to. That's our fault as players.''

In the postmortem, Pearl recounted the warning signs.

"I played C.J. too many minutes,'' he said. "I played (Andre) Patterson and Lofton probably too many minutes.

"I didn't keep 'em fresh enough to make plays down the stretch like we would normally make.''

Pearl didn't want to use fatigue as an excuse but said it would be misleading not to consider it a factor:

"We obviously didn't have the same level of energy.''

If we've learned anything at all about Tennessee, a team with obvious limitations, it's that energy is magical.

And at crunch time, when victory and defeat are teetering on that fine line, it's often the difference.

By Wednesday night, when Kentucky comes to town, the Vols have to find it again.