Basketball lesson of the day: Expect the unexpected.

On Tuesday, Tennessee played poorly at Missouri and lost. Rick Barnes used unkind words in describing 15 turnovers.

On Saturday at Food City Center, Tennessee gave much greater effort against Alabama, reduced turnovers to six and lost. Barnes complained about some of the six.

There are multiple aspects in trying to explain what happened.

The Vols hit only 38.5 percent of their shots. They went 0-for-5 on three-pointers in the second half.

They again had trouble guarding a guard. Labaron Philon scored 23. He took over the game when it mattered most.

Vol star freshman Nate Ament played only 11 minutes and suffered a leg injury in a scrum for a loose ball. In football, the call would have been clipping. Nate retired with two points.

Tennessee was up by 13 with 12:16 remaining but failed to finish. At crunch time, Alabama was the better team. It closed with a 10-2 run.

Something Barnes said the other day still rings true: “We’re not good enough to not play well and expect to win games against other good teams that are playing pretty good basketball.”

Alabama is playing pretty good basketball. It is on an eight-game winning streak.

Alabama polished off Tennessee, 71-69. The Tide’s last shot, with 23 seconds remaining, was a slashing drive by Philon and a short jumper over JP Estrella. It was absolutely decisive. It was the Tide’s only lead of the game.

“In the end, they made one more play than we did,” said Barnes. “We needed to get a stop, we couldn’t. We needed to come up with a big rebound, we didn’t. We needed to get a basket.

“I thought we were going to take it hard to the basket there, and thought if we could get it on the glass, score it or get an offensive rebound, we thought it would work our way.”

It didn’t.

Alabama now has a 12-4 record against Southeastern Conference foes. Tennessee is 10-6. Tournament seedings are hanging in the balance.

Vol guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie almost had a spectacular evening. He scored 26, had seven assists, eight steals and five rebounds. Alas, he missed 14 shots, including the last two of the game.

“Ja’Kobi was great,” said Barnes. “I mean, you look at what he did, he couldn’t do any more than what he did. I thought he played his heart out,”

Jaylen Carey was much improved over recent outings. He contributed 10 points and nine rebounds. Felix Okpara had eight points and nine rebounds. Estrella scored 12 and grabbed six boards. Amari Evans finished with seven points and eight rebounds.

Tennessee won the first half by 12. Alabama, averaging 92.9 points per game against SEC opponents, scored 28 in 20 minutes. It was better after intermission. It hit 51.7 percent.

The Tide opened the second half with a hot streak that included three threes. It reduced the deficit to four. Tennessee answered and then some. Alabama went 5:59 without a field goal. It recovered with a five-of-six streak.

Philon scored 14 in the Tide recovery and winning finish. Latrell Wrightsell was top scorer for the visitors – 25 points on eight of 12 accuracy. He was six of nine on three-point shots.

Barnes was asked what went wrong in the closing minutes. He didn’t like the first four minutes of the game, last four of the first half, first four of the second, and obviously, the last four of the game.

“We put the pressure on ourselves with the turnovers at the wrong time. I thought a point in the game that was critical, where we could have maybe given ourselves even more breathing room, Ja’Kobi was out of the game and we had two bad turnovers.”

The coach said ball-screen coverage broke down more than anything in the second half.

“Philon is a terrific player … they’re an extremely hard team to guard.”

Barnes didn’t think Vol post play was as good as I thought.

“They’re not going to make all those, but when you have as many offensive rebounds as we have, we should be getting more production out of that and we’re not … we need more points from our offensive rebounds for certain.”

Next: Tennessee plays at South Carolina on Tuesday evening. Tipoff is set for 6. SEC Network will have the telecast.

Marvin West welcomes comments or questions from readers. His address is marvinwest75@gmail.com

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