MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin men's basketball team came up short and suffered an 80-70 loss against No. 9 Tennessee on Friday night at the Kohl Center.

The Badgers (1-1) had four players score in double figures, led by transfer guard AJ Storr's 17-point performance. Steven Crowl finished with 14 points and nine rebounds. Chucky Hepburn added 13 points, while Tyler Wahl chipped in 10 points and eight rebounds.

Tennessee (2-0) shot 50 percent from the floor in the game, including 55.6 percent (15-for-27 FG) in the first half alone.

"We'll learn from this one," Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard said. "We'll break it down and do a lot of teaching and make sure we're getting better quickly, because we obviously turn the page and get ready for what's coming next."

Tennessee closed the first half on a 12-4 run and took a 43-35 lead into the break.

Storr scored 12 of his 17 points in the first half, with Hepburn right behind him with nine points in the first stanza.

With 11:45 left in the second half, Wahl scored to cut the Vols' lead to 54-53. Later in the second half, UW cut the lead again to just three points with 8:03 to go, but Dalton Knecht and Tennessee seemed to always have the answer.

Knecht finished with a game-high 24 points, 10 of those points coming in the second half.

"Just simple things that are correctable and that we can improve on will be the biggest focus," Gard said. "There is nothing out there that happened tonight that we can't get better at and we won't try to get better at. When you have teams like Tennessee and Providence back-to-back, that is something that will help you push your young guys before you really get into the grinder in January."

Wisconsin returns to action Tuesday when it heads on the road for a game at Providence.