Through the first 14 games of the season, former Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht leads Tennessee in scoring at 15.1 points per game.
Knecht burst onto the scene at the beginning of November scoring double-digit point totals in his first nine games including a 24-point showing at Wisconsin and a 37-point showing at North Carolina.
While Knecht’s star began to skyrocket early in the season with quick-fire analysis of Knecht being a first-round draft pick, so did the need for a Knecht gameplan from opposing teams. It’s hard to keep a 6-foot-6 secret these days, and Knecht isn’t the exception. Teams began game planning specifically for Tennessee’s new shooting wing, which has presented the senior guard with a new set of challenges as SEC play begins.
Head coach Rick Barnes spoke about Knecht’s early season output during an interview with Bob Baskerville and Jon Reed on the Fox Sports Knoxville Morning Show on Monday.
“This is a whole new experience for Dalton,” Barnes explained during the radio interview. “You think about how he got off to just an incredible start and everybody, everybody now, he’s a big focus of their game plan.”
While scoring the ball has always been a big part of Knecht’s game, and the most important trait he brought over to Rocky Top, Barnes still has a defensive-minded team and wants to make sure that Knecht has solid footing on Tennessee’s defensive identity. There are a lot of new defensive challenges for Knecht playing SEC ball but challenges that are seemingly being hammered home early and often.
“[Knecht] came out of a program where they were a zone team. He’s learning how to play man-defense for the first time in his life,” Barnes continued on to say. “He’s getting better. I thought, Saturday, he gave us a really great effort trying to do the things – Bob, Jon, you’ve got to realize that these guys, Jahmai Mashack and Jonas [Aidoo], those guys have played a lot of minutes together defensively and they know how to help each other, they know how to kick out screens, things that just happen so spontaneously that if you don’t see it or aren’t around it every day, people just wouldn’t understand it. And there are times when you’ve got to have a defensive presence out there. But like I said, Dalton, he’s going to continue to get better.”
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There’s an element of patience when it comes to getting a star player like Knecht up to speed on the defensive rotations and matchups that Tennessee has had around for years now. As Barnes alluded to, it’s not hard for players like Josiah-Jordan James, Santiago Vescovi, and Jahmai Mashack to play defense well together simply because of the amount of time that they had already been doing so. But, on the other hand, Tennessee is still relying on the scorer that Knecht is and wants him to stay aggressive on the offense side of the ball. Patience on one end of the court and aggression on the other end… A tough challenge, but one that Knecht has the makeup for.
“We need him to be aggressive when he gets the ball offensively,” Barnes said. “We need the same thing out of Jordan Gainey. We need the same things with those guys. We’re looking for their offense and we need them to bring it for us.
It all comes back to defense with a Rick Barnes team, though. And it sounds like the challenge is being accepted by both Dalton Knecht and Jordan Gainey as the SEC schedule rolls in.
“But, defensively, they are both getting better every day with our schemes and what we are trying to do.”
No. 5 Tennessee will hit the road for two away games this week after a dominant win over No. 22 Ole Miss this past Saturday night in Knoxville. Tennessee will take on Mississippi State in Starkville this Wednesday evening and will play Georgia in Athens on Saturday afternoon.
To listen to the full Rick Barnes interview with Fox Sports Knoxville’s Bob Baskerville and Jon Reed, check out the link attached here.
