I agree they may have been a little tired. However, if Tennessee's defense does not get better then can forget about the NCAA tournament. One thing about Pearl's teams is that they generally played good defense. I believe with Pearl Tennessee would have beat Memphis and won tonight. Just a little bit of defense would have won both games.
Tennessee under Pearl was usually the best conditioned team on the floor. They beat many teams with better talent like Kentucky, Florida and many others by simply outlasting them, playing harder in the last few minutes of the game. I loved the story about their running the ramp over at Neyland at 5 oclock in the morning singing "where is Kentucky, in bed asleep, where is Alabama, in bed asleep."