With the season officially tipping off next week, it’s college basketball watch list week and a pair of Tennessee guards landed on a pair of lists early this week.
Point guard Zakai Zeigler landed on the Bob Cousy Award Preseason Watch List on Tuesday while shooting guard Chaz Lanier landed on the Jerry West Award Preseason Watch List. The Bob Cousy Award is given annually to the nation’s top point guard while the Jerry West Award is given to the nation’s top shooting guard. Both watch lists included 20 players each.
Tennessee is one of five teams that had a player on each list along with Baylor (Jeremy Roach and V.J. Edgecomb), North Carolina (R.J. Davis and Elliot Cadeau), Duke (Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster) and Kansas (Dajuan Harris and Zeke Mayo).
Zeigler is coming off a strong junior season where he was a semifinalist for the Bob Cousy Award while failing to be one of five finalists. Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes lamented Zeigler not being a finalist last season after the junior guard averaged 11.8 points and 6.2 assists per game.
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The undersized point guard struggled the first month of the season as he worked back from a torn ACL but was stellar in SEC play where he averaged 14.1 points (37% shooting from three-point range) to go along with seven assists.
Lanier was a highly touted North Florida transfer guard this offseason, choosing Tennessee over Kentucky and BYU. The 6-foot-4 shooting guards averaged 19.7 points and 4.8 rebounds per game last season and was one of the nation’s best shooters, knocking down 44% of his attempts from deep.
Neither Zeigler or Lanier played particularly well in Tennessee’s exhibition loss against Indiana. Zeigler totaled 13 points on two-of-10 shooting while also dishing out eight assists and turning it over five times. After a strong performance in the Vols’ closed door scrimmage against Davidson, Lanier scored just eight points on a horrid three-of-16 shooting from the field.
Both Zeigler and Lanier will look to propel Tennessee basketball this season as the Vols open up their 2024-25 season on Monday, Nov. 4 against Gardner Webb.
