Hope nobody put off getting that free oil change. Just kidding. I know a lot of Tiger fans experienced a major hangover today, and that’s only to be expected. I asked before the UAB game which game fans would rather lose, if they had to lose one. I think a loss to UAB would have felt better because it could have been written off to being on the road, against a team that was making crazy shots all game. Losing to Tennessee probably hurts more because, well, it’s Tennessee, and the Tigers lost because they got killed in the effort areas.

I always resisted the undefeated talk, because it’s just so hard to do. At the same time, I never was in the camp that the Tigers needed a loss in order to win a national title. We’ll know for sure in about six weeks whether they indeed needed to lose this game, but if I had to render a snap judgement, I’d say it will be a positive in the long term. Now that we’re past this game, it’s a little easier to look back and make that argument.

Here’s what I’d say. From the Georgetown game on Dec. 22 through the first 27 or 28 minutes of the Houston road game on Jan. 30, the Tigers really played unbelievable basketball. They soundly beat Georgetown and Arizona, ripped through the Pepperdines and Sienas, beat Southern Miss by 36, totally out-ran Gonzaga and had a 20-point lead in the second half at Houston. From that point on, however, I don’t think I could say the Tigers have gotten better as a basketball team. Sure, they won the games — UTEP, UCF, Houston again, UAB — but were they really getting better? And if you’re not getting better at this time of year, you’re getting worse. Was arrogance creeping in? Perhaps. It’s hard to maintain that edge when you feel invincible. Maybe that’s why pretty much every loose ball or rebound that could have gone either way went to Tennessee for 80-90% of the game.

This is probably a good time for a loss, with four games to go in the regular season. That’s plenty of time to bottom out and build back up to the point where the Tigers can play their best basketball in March. That’s what Florida did two years ago when they lost three games in a row — including at home to Tennessee — at this very same time of the season.

I wouldn’t worry about a No. 1 seed at this point. The Tigers are still in solid position for that. One more loss in the regular season would put the pressure on Memphis to win the conference tournament, but that’s about it.

As a post-script to my blog entry last night, it obviously generated a lot of comments. Most of them, however, were misguided. Just to clarify, it’s not a personal thing with me. Whether someone wants to talk or doesn’t want to talk after a game doesn’t affect me either way. If someone doesn’t want to be interviewed, you just go to someone else. You had a large media contingent in the locker room last night — national and local — and everybody was getting stonewalled by the players. I highly commend Derrick Rose, Doneal Mack and Robert Dozier for being accessible, especially given that the latter two had a really, really tough night.

It’s not an easy thing to do after an emotional loss, and I know that. Where it becomes a concern, however, is that CDR and Antonio Anderson are the team captains. That means they are supposed to be the emotional leaders and public spokesmen for the team, which, like it or not, is part of the deal when you play sports at this level. Last night was a really good opportunity for them to stand up in front of everybody and show the character that we all know they have. They would have earned a lot of points for that in the eyes of the national media, which, even if you don’t believe it, really is looking for something endearing about this team to grab on to. Instead last night, respected national people were in the locker room saying things like, “America’s team? Yeah right.” Someone even mentioned that it could affect their vote for CDR on the All-American team if it’s a tie between him and somebody else. Fair? Maybe not, but when you play at this level and you want all the accolades, you’re not going to get the benefit of the doubt when you’re only accessible after victories.

So when the team captains said no to reporters, everybody last night swarmed around Rose, a 19-year old freshman who had just experienced his first loss as a college player. Was it fair to him? No, but we’ve got jobs to do. We can’t force anyone to talk to us, but Rose was gracious and classy enough to do it. Rose, by the way, often cannot be found by the media after victories, letting his teammates take the glory. Last night, he absorbed the heat. And by the way, NBA people notice that kind of stuff. If you think they aren’t interested in who is and who isn’t stepping forward as team spokesmen in the tough times, you’re sadly mistaken because it indicates the kind of intangibles that set players apart in a league where there’s not much of a talent difference between the guy who had a 10-year career and the NBDL guy who never gets a shot.