Tennessee basketball picked up its best win of the season, knocking off No. 7 Texas A&M 77-69 in College Station on Saturday afternoon.
The Vols got hot-shooting from Chaz Lanier and big shots late in the game from Zakai Zeigler and Jordan Gainey to earn a major road win over Texas A&M.
Following the game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes talked about the strong defensive effort, Lanier getting going from deep and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said.
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Postgame Presser
On how much of Tennessee’s game plan was to restrict Texas A&M’s ability to dribble and drive to the rim
“It is our game plan. To be quite honest with you, we try to do that every night. They’re hard downhill drivers, get you into rotations. As you know, they’re one of the best rebounding teams in the country, both ways. They pull you out of position. We were concerned about those rotations like that. But early we really wanted to keep it as tight as we could. Didn’t want foul them, fouled a little bit too much obviously. But they create that. Really hard team to guard because of what they do and their second, third, and fourth efforts to get there.
Lot of respect for Buzz and the Texas A&M family here. He’s done a great job. He really has. And they’re hard, they’re really hard to play against. Really proud of our guys today where, again, I thought they were very resilient. We didn’t get off to the start we wanted, but again, that happens. But we kept our poise.”
On if Tennessee did anything special to take advantage of A&M’s defense or if it was just Chaz Lanier getting hot
“We wanted to spread them out to start with. We wanted to spread them out and all we wanted to do with Chaz is get him a little bit of separation. He’s gotten so much better he’s seen all kinds of defenses. Again, I don’t think anybody’s being fouled more than he’s being fouled. I told Fran Fraschilla last night, I said, watch how much his shirt tail is out. He gets grabbed and pulled. And we’re just trying to screen him to get him a little separation. As you know, he has got a quick release. But I love the fact he started, the last couple weeks, driving the ball downhill to make people not able to always just sit on his jump shot. But he’s worked hard, his teammates believe in him and, again, we’ve seen him do it. He’s done it before, early in the year. He had 25 points in the first half against Baylor and so we’ve seen him do that. And he’s had other games like that but just really proud of the fact that he is continuing to try to get that better every day.”
On Tennessee’s play out of the timeout with 21 seconds left, with Zakai Zeigler taking the quick three
“Well, the play was also drawn up for a lob. He was going to lob it up there and let Felix go up there. But he didn’t get quite as deep under it. We wanted him to get there early and try to get position underneath, but the option wasn’t (there). Right then I told Shack watch this. And ‘Z’ made a great cut to get open and he obviously had to shoot it.”
On what it says about Zakai Zeigler to close the game and play as well as he did in the second half
“Well, we’ve seen him do it. It seems like the bigger the moment, he thrives on that. But you know, he’s such a special player, the things that he does for his teammates. And Chaz would probably tell you the biggest thing is how he does it every day in practice. What you see and the way you see him play, it’s hard to get guys to do that, but it’s just in his DNA. But he’s never going to quit. And at the end we really wanted to start driving really, really hard. We wanted to do that, try to play behind, because they do an incredible job of collapsing, going after the ball, breaking it loose. And I thought those drives were really key for him.”
Vol Network radio
On it being a satisfying win
“Well, again, this time of year we all know what we’re playing for and trying to continue to get seeding in your league and obviously you can do enough to get a great postseason seed, but right now it’s just about what’s at hand. And I always tell our guys, we’ll just worry about today and all that will take care of itself. We’ll get what we deserve. But really coming in here, again, I don’t know if they’ve lost here this year (just once). This, again, and we know obviously happy for Zakai and Jahmai. They had never won in here and the fact that they came in and were able to get a win and they’ve always thought this is a really special place, tough place to play. But we, again, (are) fortunate today things turned out our way.”
On the defensive effort on Wade Taylor and Texas A&M as a whole
“Well again, we still foul a little bit too much. We wanted to take the free throw line away from them as much as we could. We knew it was going to be a hard day on the glass trying to rebound against them because they do a great job of running down their misses, but, you know, we had our segments too where we got some offensive rebounds and I thought Jahmai Mashack’s two tips (in) were huge. They were huge and which a lot of people wouldn’t notice that, but maybe the two biggest plays of the game.”
