Vols hoping to look ‘super scary’ offensively more often
Asking a college basketball team to average three points per minute is a bit much.
That translates to 120 points per 40-minute contest, and Alabama leads all Division I men’s programs right now with its 90.2-point average. Yet Tennessee got a taste of what that would feel like Wednesday night, when the No. 4 Volunteers scored 57 points in the final 19 minutes to turn a 39-28 deficit into a dizzying 85-81 victory over No. 15 Missouri inside the Food City Center.
“When we’re shooting the ball like we did tonight and we’re taking care of the ball, we’re super scary,” Vols senior point guard Zakai Zeigler said in a news conference.
The 85 points marked a season high in Southeastern Conference competition for Tennessee, which made 10 of 15 attempts from 3-point range eight days after going 11-of-45 from behind the arc in a 78-73 loss to Kentucky in the same arena. The Vols actually cooled off from long range Wednesday after shooting 4-of-5 on 3-point attempts in the first half, but they had 10 turnovers through 21 minutes and only one during their closing surge.
Tennessee improved to 19-4 overall and to 6-4 in the SEC and will seek its fourth consecutive 20-win season when it visits Oklahoma (16-6, 3-6) on Saturday (noon Eastern on ESPN).
“The shots were open, and we found them,” Vols senior forward Igor Milicic Jr. said. “Zakai was finding me. I was finding Zakai, and other players were getting open. We were also playing faster in transition, and that helped for sure.”
Zeigler (knee) and Milicic (flu) returned to action after sitting out last Saturday’s 64-44 stirring defeat of Florida. The two scored 21 points apiece and led five Tennessee players in double figures, with Felix Okpara tallying 12 points and Jordan Gainey and Chaz Lanier each adding 10.
According to ESPN, Zeigler and Milicic became Tennessee’s first tandem to amass at least 20 points and five assists in the same game since 1998.
“In the first half, we made one cut and stopped playing,” Tennessee 10th-year coach Rick Barnes said. “You need to move them, because they do a great job of switching out and taking your cuts away. We talked about back cut after back cut, and guys were just making a straight cut, which we didn’t want. They didn’t even try to slip to the open area.
“We worked harder on offense in the second half to try and get shots. We’ve got to know by now what we’re going to get, and it goes back to understanding what you’re looking for.”
The Vols drained 3-pointers all night and protected the ball in the second half, but Barnes would still like to see his team make more shots at the rim and to be more effective out in transition.
Though Tennessee is producing a special season that is currently accompanied by a projected No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament, according to ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi, the Vols continue to leave behind plenty to dissect. An optimist could point to Tennessee missing 34 attempts from 3-point range against Kentucky but trailing by only a point with 30 seconds to play, while a pessimist could view Wednesday’s win as shooting 66.7% from long range and prevailing by only four.
“Everything that Coach Barnes told us was going to be there was there,” Zeigler said. “We didn’t really see it in the first half, but in the second half, we really just listened and locked into what he was saying. We made the right things, and that was it.”
Odds and ends
Tennessee made 17 of its last 18 free throws against Mizzou after beginning the game 1-of-6. … Barnes on Zeigler returning and playing more than 34 minutes: “I’d like to have gotten that down a little bit more, but we can’t do that unless we know what we’re going to get off the bench every time.” … After combining for 36 minutes and 42 seconds of playing time Saturday against Florida, Darlinstone Dubar and Bishop Boswell combined for 4:30 Wednesday. … Tennessee will be a part of the next three Players Era Festival tournaments in Las Vegas, with the 2025 event set for November. Alabama competed in this season’s tournament, defeating Houston and Rutgers before losing to Oregon.
Baseball publicity
Tony Vitello’s reigning national champion baseball Vols will have 11 of their 30 SEC contests televised this spring by either ESPN2, ESPNU or the SEC Network.
That includes two of three games against visiting Texas A&M from April 4-6 and two of three at LSU from April 25-27. All three of Tennessee’s games against visiting Vanderbilt from May 9-11 will be televised.
Tennessee opens its 2025 season next Friday, Feb. 14, inside Lindsey Nelson Stadium against Hofstra.
