Tennessee basketball held a practice open to the media on Wednesday afternoon at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center. The Vols did normal practice activities, a half scrimmage and simulated end of game sequences.
Heres notes and observations from the practice and some individual stats from the 20-minute scrimmage.
Let’s start with Zakai Zeigler who was as close to a full participant in Wednesday’s practice as we’ve seen since he tore his ACL on the final day of February. Zeigler is moving well and there aren’t many signs of a guy working back from a serious knee injury.
He didn’t start during the scrimmage portion of practice but Zeigler did play plenty of misses. Besides him not starting or being in for the last 30 seconds, nothing about his playing time during the portion of practice caught me as surprising.
With Zeigler almost at full go this is the healthiest Tennessee has been all offseason. A number of players have had minor injuries this preseason but every scholarship player was active and going through practice.
Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht earned Rick Barnes’ ire more than anyone else Wednesday. Barnes was most upset with Knecht’s defensive effort and intensity but was also displeased with his movement off the ball. Like every practice we’ve gotten to watch, Knecht showed off his offensive talent but he still has a long way to go defensively. We’ll see how those two mesh with the season right around the corner.
Let’s move on to the other transfer— shooting guard Jordan Gainey. I find myself more-and-more impressed with Gainey every time I watch him. I was skeptical about his role when he committed but I’ve made a full 180 and would be surprised if he’s not in the rotation at the very least.
The USC Upstate transfer is better at creating offense and driving to the basket than I expected and has seemingly quickly adjusted to Tennessee’s defensive standards.
Freddie Dilione and Santiago Vescovi did a lot of what we already know they do well. Dilione wasn’t as productive offensively as he’s been sometimes but still showed his playmaking ability. The best thing about Dilione’s day is that he didn’t earn Barnes’ ire often for defensive let downs.
Vescovi was solid on the court doing just about everything and made plenty of perimeter shots despite it not being a great shooting day for him.
Let’s move on to the front court where I found myself impressed by both freshman big men. Cade Phillips isn’t a polished offensive product but I found myself impressed by his ability to do some things with his back to the basket and also to put the ball on the floor from the perimeter and get to the basket. He does a lot of little, scrappy things on the court well and it explains why Tennessee’s seniors told Barnes that the Vols can’t redshirt him.
JP Estrella held his own battling down low and showed some nice touch around the rim. He was one of the leading scorers in the scrimmage. He still needs to get stronger and has a lot of fine tuning to do like almost any freshman big man, but the 6-foot-11 freshman looks like a guy that could give Tennessee a few minutes a night come SEC play.
Tobe Awaka has impressed me all preseason with his development and sneakily his ability to straight line drive to the basket and score. That’s not something we’re going to see a whole lot of in games but it is there. It wasn’t in the scrimmage but in one portion of five-on-five work he drove past Josiah-Jordan James and was fouled.
Awaka didn’t get a ton of touches with his back to the basket but he remains a rebounding machine who is going to create scoring opportunities for himself solely off that ability. The sophomore’s ability to play the five defensively remains the big question to me, but there were no glaring miscues or mistakes I picked up on.
Junior Jonas Aidoo looks a lot like the player we saw last year. He’s super talented defensively and has the ability to shoot the ball some but he doesn’t have a ton of post moves or ability to create offense himself. With Tennessee lacking post depth, Aidoo’s ability to be a consistent difference maker on the defensive end will be a big deal.
Lastly, I remain in “see it to believe it” mode when it comes to Tennessee playing faster. They’ve emphasized that in the preseason in recent years and it hasn’t showed up during the season. It’s just too hard to play fast when you pull teams into the mud with your defense and force them into a lot of long possessions.
All that skeptical preamble is to this, all five-on-five work before the scrimmage was with a 15 second shot clock. Tennessee is definitely emphasizing attacking quickly on the offensive end. We’ll see if that proves true when we get into the thick of the season.
That’s enough notes and observations. On to the scoring from the scrimmage.
More From RTI: Santiago Vescovi Out For Exhibition Game Against Michigan State
Scrimmage Stats
The grey team beat the orange team 42-37. I missed a basket for the grey team and have them with just 40 points in my notes so someone got two more points but I’m unsure who. Apologies for the mistake.
Zakai Zeigler began the scrimmage on the orange team and Freddie Dilione began the scrimmage on the grey team. They switched teams after roughly five minutes so will show up on each team’s scoring.
Grey Team
Santiago Vescovi: 9 points
JP Estrella: 8 points
Cade Phillips: 6 points
D.J. Jefferon: 6 points
Tobe Awaka: 5 points
Zakai Zeigler: 4 points
Grant Hurst: 2 points
Freddie Dilione: 0 points
Orange Team
Jordan Gainey: 11 points
Dalton Knecht: 9 points
Freddie Dilione: 6 points
Josiah-Jordan James: 4 points
Zakai Zeigler: 3 points
Cameron Carr: 2 points
Jonas Aidoo: 2 points
Jahmai Mashack: 0 points
