Strange: UT's defense rescues offense

BATON ROUGE, La. - Bruce Pearl slumped into the chair Saturday and wearily began his postgame interview by saying it wouldn't be the best interview he ever gave.

Hey, his team had just had an off day. The coach is entitled to one, too.

Tennessee 47, LSU 45. That's what the box score says so it must be real.

But isn't that the halftime box score? Not this day.

Earlier in the week, when he was still LSU's coach, John Brady said he had to keep the score in the 70s for the Tigers to have any chance to upset the go-go Vols.

In his debut as interim coach, Butch Pierre kept it in the 40s.

Not to dampen Pierre's aspirations to become Brady's successor, but Tennessee played a major role in keeping the game in the 40s.

It was an odd week for the Vols. They averaged 75.5 points in two SEC wins. The screwy part is the breakdown: 104 against Florida, 47 against LSU.

The Vols shot 31.7 percent from the field Saturday in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, a building named for a player who routinely scored 47 points all by himself.

At least LSU was guarding the Vols from the field.

At the free-throw line, with no hands in their faces, the Vols shot 26.7 percent, hitting only 4 of 15 attempts. They were 0-for-the second half.

"Trust me,'' said Pearl, "we've been addressing it. Probably too much.

"You focus on it, it gets worse.''

Given such abysmal numbers, how did Tennessee not lose this game?

By keeping LSU in the 40s, too, that's how.

Granted, this LSU bears no resemblance to the LSU of two years ago, the one that beat Tennessee in this building and rolled on to the Final Four.

Still, the Tigers played tenaciously in an emotionally charged circumstance, barely 24 hours after learning Brady was out.

"Maybe,'' said UT's Tyler Smith, "they wanted to prove something.''

In the final desperate minutes, Tennessee wanted to prove something, too - on the defensive end.

JaJuan Smith, as sick as he'd ever been in any basketball game in his life, came up with the game-winning steal and layup.

"I'm a senior,'' he said. "If I'm a freshman or sophomore I don't even come on this trip.''

Before Smith's heroics, teammate J.P. Prince put together a defensive tour de force in the final minutes.

Prince, in fact, was the poster boy for Tennessee's day. His game was UT's game in miniature.

On the offensive end, Prince was awful: 1-of-7 from the field. At the free-throw line, he was 1-of-5, lowering his already embarrassing season percentage to 44.8 percent.

"That's just not acceptable,'' said Prince. "I knew if we lost, I would put it on myself.''

So Prince put some defensive pressure on himself.

"I couldn't get nothing to fall on offense,'' said Prince, "so I had to go to my defense for once. Especially with JaJuan sick. He's our stopper.''

With UT clinging to a 42-38 lead, Prince blocked 6-foot-10 Anthony Randolph's point-blank shot.

With UT still clinging, up 45-42, Prince stripped Marcus Thornton, the SEC's leading scorer, on a drive to the hoop.

Next trip, same score, Prince flicked the ball away from a driving Thornton to Tyler Smith, diverting another scoring chance for the Tigers.

"As bad as we shot,'' said Prince, "we still got the victory. That says something about our defense.

"All that matters is the final score. Forget about this. It's a one-time thing when we all shoot like that.''

Maybe the moral of Saturday's story is it's better to have an off day on offense than at the defensive end.

Or at least this: If you do have an off day on offense, you'd darn sure better not have one on defense.

Tennessee, to its credit, realized that Saturday. That's what the Vols take away from this one.

Mike Strange may be reached at 865-342-6276 or strange2@knews.com.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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