Coming off a much needed midweek open date, Tennessee basketball earned its best win of the season in a 77-69 victory over No. 7 Texas A&M.
Here’s three quick takeaways on a massive victory for Tennessee.
Tennessee Starts Both Halves Poorly
Few things are becoming more consistent for Tennessee basketball than a bad start. That continued for the Vols against Texas A&M marking the fourth game in the last five that Tennessee has been sluggish to start.
The Vols turned it over on two of their first three possessions with both of them leading to wide open transition dunks. It’s the third straight game that Tennessee has turned it over twice in its first three possessions. Those two dunks came after Texas A&M’s first possession when the Aggies grabbed two offensive rebounds and scored on their third attempt.
Those sequences led to a 6-0 Texas A&M start and that trend continued for the game’s first eight minutes. The Aggies jumped out to a 17-8 lead as turnovers plagued Tennessee and the Aggies bullied them inside with six of their first eight buckets coming in the pain.
That poor start dug Tennessee an early hole and forced them to play from behind right from the jump. The same thing happened in the second half. Tennessee took a four-point lead into the intermission but came out slow again in the second half.
The Vols missed their first four shots and had two more quick turnovers. That led to an 8-2 Texas A&M run that saw the Aggies retake the lead to open the second half.
Chaz Lanier Goes Nuclear
What got Tennessee basketball out of the early hole was the hot shooting of Chaz Lanier. The sharp shooting guard hit Tennessee’s first three shots from the field, all three-pointers, and kept the Vols in striking distance during the slow start.
But Lanier didn’t slow down after that hot start. He totaled 22 points in the first half on eight-of-10 shooting from the field and six-of-seven shooting from three-point range. He missed a midrange jumper on the game’s first possession and then a heat check triple later on.
Texas A&M lost him a few times early that allowed him to get in a rhythm. But after that, he made difficult shots from the perimeter and in the mid range. Lanier also had a driving left-handed dunk, something we haven’t seen much from him this season.
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Lanier slowed down in the second half where he scored just eight points on two made three-pointers. That was still good enough for Lanier to break his previous single-game three-pointers made record.
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Tennessee’s Defense Limits Texas A&M’s Strengths
Texas A&M is not a good offensive team but there’s two things the Vols do really well on the offensive end— they have Wade Taylor and they score on second chance opportunities.
Tennessee did a good job of limiting Texas A&M in both of those areas. Wade Taylor dished out nine assists but struggled to score, totaling 18 points on a putrid zero-of-nine three-point shooting.
The one thing Taylor did really well was get to the foul line where he made 10 free throws with all coming in the second half.
Texas A&M is the best offensive rebounding team in the country and they had a lot of success on the offensive glass against Tennessee. The Aggies totaled 14 offensive rebounds which equated to 39% of their missed shots.
But what Tennessee did a great job of is not letting Texas A&M score off of its second chance opportunities. The Aggies scored just 10 second chance points. While Tennessee didn’t rebound as well as they’d have wanted to, they played great defense after giving up the boards.
Those two combinations led to Tennessee having a strong defensive showing and holding Texas A&M to 1.095 points per possessions.
Final Stats
Up Next
Tennessee is back on the road on Tuesday night when they face LSU in Baton Rouge. Tipoff is at 9 p.m. ET and the SEC Network is broadcasting the game..
