Tennessee, playing for the first time since an impressive home win against Vanderbilt a week earlier, lost for the second time in four games to fall to 12-7 overall and 5-2 in the Southeastern Conference. The Lady Vols are tied for second place in the standings with No. 9 LSU (18-3, 5-2) and Ole Miss (15-5, 5-2), with that trio behind top-ranked South Carolina (19-0, 7-0) — which beat Vanderbilt on Sunday to knock the Commodores out of the second-place group.

Ole Miss won for just the ninth time in 61 all-time meetings, ending an eight-game winning streak for Tennessee in the series.

The Lady Vols led 27-21 after the first 10 minutes, having registered season highs for both points and shooting success by going 11-for-16 (68.8%) on field-goal attempts. Ole Miss picked up the pace after that, outscoring the visitors 18-12 in the second quarter for a 39-all game at halftime, and then 24-18 in the third quarter for a 63-57 advantage entering the fourth.

“I think that we were on our heels, pretty much, a lot of the game,” said Tennessee’s Jasmine Powell, who had a team-high six assists but was limited to seven points on 3-for-11 shooting. “I think that we didn’t really have as much poise as we like. I think that we didn’t handle the storm as best as we could.

“I mean, we played scared for a lot of the game. That’s not what we do here, so regrouping and kind of readjusting our mentality, we need to be the aggressor moving forward and we need to clean up a lot of the things we’ve seen.”

Asked about the cause of the Lady Vols’ offensive slowdown after the first quarter, Harper first went in another direction.

“Well, we scored 75 points, and that should be good enough,” she said before pausing. “We missed some shots. We missed some easy looks that we’ve got to finish, and then we’ve got to give ourselves some second opportunities if we’re going to miss some shots. We’ve got to be able to get to the glass and clean some of those up.”

Jackson had a team-high six rebounds, the only Tennessee player with more than three, and Spear added four assists to her standout shooting performance as she went 11-for-17 overall and 4-for-8 from 3-point range. Spear was 4-for-7 at the foul line as Tennessee went 7-for-10; Ole Miss made all but two of its dozen free throws.

Spear’s free throw with 1:35 to play pulled Tennessee within 76-75, but the Lady Vols sandwiched a turnover of their own with a pair of missed layups down the stretch.

“At that point, every play matters,” Harper said. “I believed we had a few looks but didn’t score. You must be able to finish those late-game shots. And when those shots don’t go in, when they don’t fall, you have to be tighter on defense, which is exactly where we fell short.”

The Lady Vols resume league play at 7 p.m. Thursday at last-place Georgia (10-9, 1-5), followed by a home game against Missouri at 2 p.m. next Sunday.

Fort Myers, Florida. Tennessee guard Jasmine Powell did not start Saturday’s game against Oklahoma at the Fort Myers Tip-Off, but she finished it.

Despite leaving the bench, Powell was on the court for

Powell was at the forefront of helping the Lady Vols make sure there were no leftovers in terms of that loss carrying into Saturday.