Velus Jones Senior Bowl Interview
COLUMBIA, SC — Sometimes basketball is a pretty simple game.
“When you shoot the ball as well as we did today it makes it all look good,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said.
The Vols made shots, and lots of them, in the second half of their dominant, 81-57, win at South Carolina Saturday afternoon.
Tennessee’s hot shooting actually began in the first half. The Vols’ first six shot attempts were all from beyond the three-point line. Junior forward Josiah Jordan James made two of them, sparking the Vols’ offense to a 16-9 start.
“He’s a basketball player,” Barnes said of James. “He’s going to do whatever he has to do to help his team win. Josiah has always been very unselfish — sometimes to a fault. He wants to be— he’s a connector both on-and-off the court. I think early in the year, as you guys know, he struggled, but he’s spent so much time working on his shot and I think the ball movement, playing at a quicker pace and getting set up has helped him shoot the ball well. He’s shooting the ball in flow.”
Playing in front of “about 33” of his friends and family, the South Carolina native put together a career game, scoring 20 points while recording six rebounds, three blocks and three steals.
Despite James’ fast start and strong three-point shooting throughout the first half, Tennessee led the Gamecocks by just four at halftime. The Vols’ offense mustered just 14 points in the final 13 minutes of the first half as South Carolina stayed in the game.
After an even first few minutes of the second half, Tennessee took control via the long ball. Olivier Nkamhoua took the Vols to the under 16 minute media timeout with a nice drive and finish but injured his ankle on the play.
Tennessee came out of the timeout with fire. Zakai Zeigler stole the ball from behind a South Carolina big man, leading a fastbreak that ended with him nailing a three-pointer from the left wing.
A quick South Carolina turnover later and it was Kennedy Chandler running the break. The end result was the same. Zeigler — who missed all three shots he took in the first half — drilled a triple on the left wing, forcing South Carolina’s Frank Martin to take a timeout.
That’s when things got interesting on the Tennessee bench.
“Zakai hit those two big threes, they called timeout,” Barnes said. “He came to the bench and threw up. He spit up on me and then got up and went to the trashcan and threw up. Came back and sat down, we said, ‘are you okay?’ He said ‘I’m good’ and came back out and scored a basket. It was one of those days for him in the second half where he really responded well.”
Zeigler scored the first four points out of the timeout, extending the UT run that started with Nkamhoua’s injury to 12-0 with 10 straight points. The freshman point guard who’s done nothing but leave followers breathless this season did it again. After struggling in the first half, Zeigler scored 18 points on six-of-10 shooting in the second.
Nkamhoua’s injury — which Barnes believes wasn’t serious — had a positive consequence. Barnes ran with the Vols’ four guard lineup for a good portion of the remainder of the game, mainly rolling with Chandler, Zeigler, Santiago Vescovi, James and John Fulkerson.
Tennessee’s played — and had success — with the small ball lineup this season, but not for the extended minutes they played at South Carolina.
With that group on the floor, Tennessee’s lead ballooned and the Vols’ extended run reached 35-12.
“When coach Barnes sees a group playing well together he leaves them in,” Tennessee point guard Kennedy Chandler said. “That’s what we did. We kept continuing to move the ball and playing with four guards is amazing. Me, Zakai, Josiah, Santi, it felt great. We can all move the ball, pass and cut. We can all shoot the ball and I feel like we shot the ball great today.”
When in the small ball lineup, Tennessee made five triples in a 10 minute span. That strong spurt pushed the Vols to 14-of-27 shooting from beyond the arc as UT made its most threes in SEC play at the highest percentage of SEC play.
The Vols won’t shoot the ball that well every time out and they’ll need to score more than 14 points in the paint, but their offense continues to turn a corner and the four-guard lineup is the shining example of what the offense can look like when it’s firing on all cylinders.
“Right now, not concerned about anything,” Barnes said with a smile. “If you told me we could score 81 points every night, I’d take it any way we could get it.”
Barnes has plenty of reasons to be smiling. The Vols are winners of five straight SEC games after last month’s embarrassing loss at Kentucky, and completed the season sweep of South Carolina for the fourth time in Barnes’ seven years in Knoxville.
