Tennessee super senior shooting guard Santiago Vescovi showed off his crafty defensive ability by recording three steals in the Vols’ NCAA Tournament win over Texas.
The three steals pushed Vescovi to 212 career steals and atop the Tennessee career steal rankings. The super senior passed former Tennessee guard Vincent Yarbrough (1998-2002) for the top spot on the list.
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with three steals on Saturday, Santi became Tennessee’s career steals leader (212) pic.twitter.com/CKS8I3kHb6
— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) March 25, 2024
It did take Vescovi 148 games to record his 212 steals while it took Yarbough just 127 games to total 211 steals. The rest of the top five in program career steals includes C.J. Watson, Chris Lofton, JuJuan Smith and Fred Jenkins.
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Vescovi’s 1.43 steals per game ranks 12th in the Vols’ program steals per game rankings. Tennessee’s veteran shooting guard increased his steals from 23 as a freshman up to 60 during his senior year while he’s gone down to 38 steals this season.
Ninth-year Tennessee coach Rick Barnes has constantly praised Vescovi’s improvement as a defender over the course of his career and it is evident. Vescovi struggled badly on the defensive end in his freshman season and is now a high-level defender and it extends well past his steal numbers.
Despite not being an elite athlete, Vescovi is good guarding the ball defensively and is a very high IQ defender who is stout off the ball.
Vescovi is looking to add to his steals total this weekend as the Vols head to Detroit for the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Tennessee faces Creighton in the Sweet 16 on Friday night and faces the winner of Gonzaga-Purdue in the Elite Eight if they can get past the Blue Jays.
