Story by William O’Brien
In a thrashing skirmish between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Vanderbilt Commodores, the Vols merely escaped a crushing defeat through their resilience and teamwork, defeating Vanderbilt 76-81.
Before all in attendance at the Thompson-Bowling Arena at Food City Center could usher their popcorn and soda to their seats, Vanderbilt had already sunk two three-point shots. Tennessee quicky responded with a mid-range jumper by Igor Milicic Jr., but this should have been an early indicator of Vanderbilt’s spiteful scoring attitude.
At the halting whistle of the first timeout, Tennessee appeared to be firing out of the gates with a chip on their shoulder in terms of aggressiveness and urgency, but still struggled to finish key scoring opportunities that often transformed into easy points for Vanderbilt on the turnover.
Vanderbilt had converted the Vols’ three turnovers into nine points, proving their ability to extract crucial points in the times of Tennessee missteps.
As Coach Rick Barnes states: “I’m not taking anything away from Vanderbilt because Mark (Byington) has done a great job with his team, but we were awful. I can’t remember how many times I hear our guys on the bench yelling: ‘We’ve gone over that’, ‘We’ve gone over that’. I can’t explain it. I wish I could. We weren’t good. I thought they got settled in and, I mean, they’re a good basketball team. You go back, they’re competitive in every game. They were right there. I think they’re an NCAA (tournament) team, as well coached as any team we’ve played all year.”
Taking these scoring opportunities in stride, Vanderbilt kept the Vols at a comfortable distance in the fist half with a higher degree of accuracy and finishing. To combat this, the Volunteers maintained a scrappy, ferocious physicality on both sides of the court.
The first half of the duel between the Volunteers and the Commodores largely remained beyond the key but entailed many missed shots from both squads. Vanderbilt maintained a 55% field goal percentage, closely leading Tennessee’s 46%.
This was not in vain, as Vanderbilt racked up nearly double the number of rebounds as Tennessee, with a staggering twenty-one rebounds before halftime.
Aside from turnovers, the Vols ensured that the Commodores remain under steady defensive pressure inside the paint and on long-range attempts, barring Vanderbilt to a 50% three-point field goal percentage.
In a surprising statistic, Zakai Zeigler entered the second half with zero points but rather adopted a true point-guard role in the early stages of the game with four assists and five rebounds. Despite this low statistic, Coach Barnes said that “as bad as ‘Z’ was in the first half, he was the difference in the game in the second half.”
Following a soul crushing defeat in the final seconds of the Kentucky game last week, all the spotlights were on starting guard Chaz Lanier; and he delivered. With thirteen points and five rebounds in the first half, Lanier adopted a strong leadership role in the early stages of the game.
Lanier also carried this sense of captaincy into the second half of play, further heightening the Volunteer’s aggression and accuracy.
Whether it be Lanier’s inextinguishable attitude, a switch in Zakai Zeigler’s mentality, or the orange Gatorade in the Tennessee locker room, something shifted for the Volunteers following halftime.
Certain players in particular were able to fan the fire of Tennessee’s vengeful second half, including Jahmai Mashack, Felix Okpara and Zakai Zeigler.
With around fifteen minutes remaining, the Volunteers had set the wind in their sales and were shaping up to be a lethal force due to impactful plays by Okpara and Milicic.
As the Vols started to heat up, Vanderbilt players appeared visibly frustrated and seemed to be scratching their heads as to how Tennessee was able to tie the game with a deep corner three-point shot by Zakai Zeigler in neck-breaking speed. Pondering this question, Vanderbilt Head Coach Mark Byington stated:
“They (Tennessee) did the same thing they did in a lot of games: in the second half when they’re down, they go to Zeigler for the high ball screen. He’s great in space, he’s great in decision making and we tried multiple things to be able to stop him, but we couldn’t come up with it. We tried some zone; we tried some different things – Lanier hit a big shot in the zone. We were hoping (our zone) could keep us together and he had a big one. If I had to say one thing (that contributed to the loss), it was Zeigler and his control of the game and his pace.”
By the nine-minute mark, the Tennessee Vols were showing no signs of fear.
In a near mirror image of the first half, the Vols managed to greatly improve their turnover conversion rate and field goal accuracy.
With only five minutes left in play, every fan in attendance at the Thompson-Bowling Arena at Food City Center was on their feet, hoarsely cheering for their athletic creed as the in-state rivals settled into an intense back-and-forth tussle on the hardwood.
The Volunteers maintained their small but significant lead by bolstering aggressive put-back dunks and highly contested “And-1s”, barely edging the Commodores out of competition.
Although Vanderbilt faltered as a second half team, the Nashville-based athletes gave it their all until the final seconds of the February 15th matchup.
Near the end of regulation time, Vanderbilt applied enough pressure to nearly surpass the Volunteers, but crucial scores from Jordan Gainey and Zakai Zeigler acted as the pallbearers to Vanderbilt’s defeat. When asked about this plunder, Coach Byington stated:
“…These teams are going to come back; they are going to come make adjustments, they’re going to come with fury. A lot of times it gets exaggerated, the half time score and things like that; we’ve got to be winning by one (point) at the end. That’s what we’re not doing, a couple times, but at the same time I’ll say this: we have done it in games. We’ve done it in Kentucky, we’ve done it in Texas, we done it in some games and we have some things to fix, but at the same time, I want to make sure that people understand how good Tennessee is, and its ability. The crowd was great, and they (the fans) lifted them up.”
As the final daggers, successful scores by Mashack and Gainey buried the Vanderbilt Commodores in a nail-biting, exhilarating rivalry game between two long-standing Tennessee program legends.
Not only did this win mean the world to Coach Rick Barnes and all Tennessee Basketball fans, but to two Volunteers in particular: Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack.
After the conclusion of this afternoon’s matchup, both players have achieved the goal of securing 100 wins in their tenure at Tennessee; a feat only six players before them achieved in the history of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
As both teams steadily approach the forthcoming March Madness tournament, Tennessee desperately required this win to secure their desired seed placement in March and the Volunteers seemed riddled with joy following the win. Although happy, the same sentiment was shared between all athletes and coaches involved in today’s matchup: “we still have a lot of work to do”
