Chaz Lanier was the jewel of Tennessee basketball’s transfer class this offseason. The North Florida transfer was the No. 10 player in the portal and chose the Vols over higher bids from both Kentucky and BYU.
But as the preseason developed, hype died down for Lanier and he did not land on any of the three preseason All-SEC teams while five other transfers did.
With SEC play looming, there might not be a transfer in the entire country, let alone the SEC, that’s been better than Lanier. The 6-foot-4 shooting guard ranks second in the SEC with 19.3 points per game. Lanier is narrowly in second place behind only Texas guard Tre Johnson.
Lanier has put up big numbers doing exactly what Tennessee brought him in to do, shoot the ball lethally from the perimeter.
The Nashville native is shooting an incredible 47% from three-point range this season and he’s doing it at an incredibly high clip. Lanier is just the 58th best three-point shooter in the country purely by percentage, but that doesn’t take into account the clip that he’s taking triples.
Lanier has made 45-of-95 three-point attempts this season. No one else in the top 100 has taken even 80 three-pointers. Defenses continue to game plan more-and-more for Lanier and try to make it more difficult for him to get shots up but he keeps on finding a way to do it.
The super senior has come through in some really big games for Tennessee too. He shot Baylor out of the gym with seven made triples in the first half of the Baha Mar Championship game. In six games against power five opponents, Lanier has made 26 total three-pointers at a 51% clip.
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To put things into a historical perspective, Lanier is on pace to finish the regular season with 116 made three-pointers. If he holds up at that pace, Lanier would need to make just three triples in the postseason to break Chris Lofton’s single-season record for most three-pointers made in a single-season.
Lanier’s 47.3 three-point percentage is currently the second best in Tennessee history behind Jon Higgins 48.6 clip in 2000-01. Higgins did it on a much lower volume, making just 53 triples over the course of the season.
Myself and others questioned whether Lanier could score consistently enough from two-point range entering the season. And he hasn’t been great there, shooting just 42.5% from within the arc while being inconsistent in his ability to get to the basket.
However, Lanier has put enough pressure on the rim to keep defenses honest. That’s all he needs to do with his three-point shooting being as elite as it is.
Through 12 games this season, Lanier is sixth in KenPom’s National Player of the Year standings. Lanier is eighth nationally in percentage of shots taken while on the court. Tennessee is leaning on its talented freshman at a high rate but Lanier is delivering and finding a way to be relatively efficient scoring despite his high usage.
Lanier and top-ranked Tennessee are back in action on New Years Eve against Norfolk State for its final non conference tuneup. Life gets more difficult for the Vols on Jan. 4 when they open up SEC play against Arkansas.
