Tennessee had a point to prove on Saturday night.
The game against conference rival Texas A&M was never in question and the 86-51 victory marked one of the Vols most complete performances under head coach Rick Barnes. The win was also the 800th of his career.
As usual, guards Santiago Vescovi, Zakai “Zip” Zeigler and Dalton Knecht were the last Vols to leave the court during warm-ups.
This has been the routine for much of the season and it’s been a recipe for success in all but one contest at Thompson Boling Arena.
Coming in to Saturday’s matchup with Texas Agriculture and Mechanical, the Vols boasted a 13-1 record at home.
Tennessee’s lone loss was to South Carolina, who was as hot as anyone in the Southeastern Conference at the time of the tilt.
Other than Alabama, Tennessee and Auburn, the teams of the SEC have fought spells of inconsistency this season. A&M certainly has.
The Aggies owned Tennessee in College Station just two weeks ago but it hasn’t won a game since. The stretch includes losses to Alabama, Arkansas and Vanderbilt. It was only Vandy’s second win of the season in conference play.
Texas A&M might not quite have the Vols number, but heading into this one the Aggies were an even 3-3 since Buzz Williams arrived in College Station. It’s not all Buzz, though.
Before this contest, the Aggies boasted a remarkable 4-2 record at Thompson Boling Arena since the 2012-13 season. Kentucky is 5-6 at TBA during that same stretch.
Knecht opened the scoring with a fast break layup and Josiah Jordan James hit one of his patented pull up jumpers to give the Vols a quick 4-0 lead.
Knecht might have had his best defensive stance as a Vol and promptly hit a three on the other end to stretch the lead to 11-3. Knecht’s defense has steadily improved of late.
A&M phenom and resident grandfather (think “The John Fulkerson of the Aggies”) Wade Taylor IV hit back-to-back-to-back threes and the Aggies were within two at the first media break.
Jordan Gainey and Tobe Awaka were the first to check in for the Vols and Barnes set up a full court press that worked on A&M’s first possession.
It mattered not, as Tennessee was called for charging fouls on two consecutive possessions. The first was on Knecht and it prompted Barnes to do the old “pull and chew” where after calling for Knecht to come to the bench, he read him his rights before he told him to take a seat.
Sophomore guard Manny Obaseki gave the Aggies their first lead with 12:23 to go in the first half but Zeigler embarked on a personal takeover where he fed Awaka with a dirty dish then immediately stole the ball. After missing the layup that resulted from the theft, Jahmai Mashack cleaned it up and put the Vols back in the lead at 17-15.
Zip hit a three a minute later and the Vols were up five with under ten to go in the half.
A three from Jace Carter put the Ags within one and after an Aidoo bucket, another Carter three tied it at 24.
Jordan James’ jumper broke the tie again and Aidoo followed a Knecht miss with a dunk. Knecht added a pair of free throws but the Aggies had another answer. While the pace was still righteous, there wasn’t a lot of scoring during the final quarter of the half and the pregame under was looking pretttttty good.
Texas A&M shot 21 threes in the first half, which would be high if it were an NBA stat, but it made only five of them. That’s 23 percent.
That would lead one to believe that the Vols would have a big lead, but Tennessee shot just 2-9 from three until the final shot of the half. That’s 22 percent.
But then, as the clock wound down to zero, Vescovi, who had passed on a bushel of shots from behind the arc in the first half, didn’t have the luxury of over thinking it and even though he was the victim of an uncalled foul on the play, his shot was wet.
Just like that, the Vols were up ten at the break, 37-27.
Now this is where I’ll lose some readers. I don’t believe in in-game momentum. I do, however, believe that it exists going in to a stoppage of play. This was going to be the perfect test for my theory (and if my theory was wrong, I was just going to delete all this). Going into the half, there is no way for either team to reverse said momentum since there is no play, so the team with the juice keeps the juice.
The second half started with a second Vescovi three.
Not only had his three at the end of the half energized the team, it had given the super senior confidence. Santi got a theft on the Aggie’s next possession and kicked to Knecht, who hit another three. After an A&M answer, Aidoo crammed his most menacing dunk as a Vol and even chirped at A&M’s 6-10, 250 lb. center Wildens Leveque. With the Vols leading and the student section about to make the bleachers implode, Agriculture and Mechanical called timeout.
On the Aggies next try, Taylor IV sailed it out of bounds and after another Aggie miss, Aidoo stretched the lead to 17. If the arena had gotten any louder, vegetables, toiletries and scores of other groceries and accouterments would have burst out of the top of Food City Center.
With 14 minutes left, the lead was 19.
A few minutes later Zip found Mashack on a beautiful look to stretch the spread to 20.
The Aggies got it down to 13 at one point in the second half but that was a close as it got and just like that, my theory about momentum had become masoned in stone forevermore.
“I thought the second half was a completely different story in every possible way,” said A&M head coach Buzz Williams after the game.
Zip had maybe his best play as a Vol with 6:30 remaining in the game. He pilfered a perfectly proper pass and instead of pulling up and letting the posse catch up, the 5-9 guard took on two A&M trees and finished with a reverse massé scoop shot. The crowd loved it and so did the Vols’ bench. Knecht hit Aidoo for an alley-oop on the next play and the Vols were up 70-45. Knecht followed with another three on the Vols next possession. He crammed another one after A&M’s 25th missed three of the game and the lead was 30 with 4:30 remaining.
The game dwindled down to its final buzzer, but not before a couple more huge plays for the Vols. The game was candled by a highlight reel dunk by freshman guard Cameron Carr. In the end, revenge was won for the Vols in the form of a 35-point dub.
Knecht led the Vols with 24 points and seven rebounds while Ziegler added nine points, nine rebounds and a career high 14 assists.
Other items of note
– Williams gave high praise to Zeigler after the game. “Incredibly underrated,” he started. “(He’s an) elite on-the-ball defender, incredibly fast on or off the ball…he’s the engine. When it gets into a half court situation, 0 (Aidoo) was really good tonight, 3 (Knecht) creates a lot of problems but 5 (Zeigler) engineers the whole thing. He’s a conduit to so many things they do on both sides of the ball.”
– Taylor IV is as good as anyone in the SEC (or the nation) when he gets hot but he vanished after scoring A&M’s first nine points. He finished the contest with just 11 points on 3 of 12 shooting and had just 5 assists.
– Jonas Aidoo is a legit SEC big man and Tobe Awaka is on the come up, too. Aidoo had 18 points and 14 rebounds in 31 minutes of play. Awaka added 12 points and six rebounds in 17 very impactful minutes.
– The Vols will face four consecutive NCAA Tournament teams to close out the season. Next up is Auburn at home on Wednesday. Tennessee then travels to Bama and South Carolina before hosting Kentucky at 4 p.m. EST on March 9th in the regular season finale.
