Tennessee basketball stayed unbeaten on the young season by blowing out Austin Peay 103-68 on Sunday afternoon in Knoxville. The Vols started fast and largely coasted to the instate victory.
Here’s three quick takeaways on the lopsided victory.
No Sleepy Sunday
With the Vols facing a solid Austin Peay team on a Sunday afternoon in November before two big games last week, I though there was a real chance that Tennessee would come out a little sleepy and take them a little while to truly take control of the game. That couldn’t have been further from what happened.
Austin Peay opened the scoring with a triple on the first possessions of the game. The Vols immediately followed it up with a 21-2 run to open up a 16-point lead in the game’s first seven minutes.
Tennessee was incredibly sharp against Austin Peay’s gambling, trap defense. They turned it over just once during the stretch and started the game by making eight of their first nine shot attempts.
The Vols cruised to a 52-29 halftime lead and shot 70% from the field in the first half. Tennessee took control of the game, played relatively sharp and put to bed any thoughts that Austin Peay could pull off its second upset of the should season.
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Zakai Zeigler And Igor Milicic Jr Lead The Way For Offense
Tennessee’s offense played its best game of the young season against Austin Peay and it was point guard Zakai Zeigler and power forward Igor Milicic that led the way for the Vols.
Zeigler ran the show as he always does offensively, dishing out eight assists while turning it over just twice. After a terrible turnover game at Louisville, Zeigler’s bounced back with a really nice week taking care of the basketball. The senior point guard became the fifth Tennessee player to record 500 assists in his career during the win.
career assist No. 500 pic.twitter.com/ZoRgDBwHwr
— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) November 17, 2024
The senior point guard also shot the ball extremely well, scoring 19 points on seven-of-eight shooting from the field and three-of-four shooting from three-point range.
Igor Milicic Jr. was the only Tennessee player that finished with more points than Zeigler. The stretch four did all his damage at the basket and didn’t make his lone three-point attempt. Milicic finished the afternoon with 23 points on 11-of-14 shooting from the field. It was the fifth 20-point game of Milicic career.
After scoring eight points and seven points the first two games of the season, Milicic scored 18 and 23 points in Tennessee’s two games this week.
Tennessee Takes Care Of Basketball
Meeting with the media to open the week, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said that cutting down on turnovers was one of the main things he wanted to see from his team this week before heading to The Bahamas.
Austin Peay was the perfect team to test that with its aggressive, trapping defense. Tennessee responded to it the right way, turning the ball over just 11 times against the Governors.
As previously mentioned, Zeigler was really good at taking care of the basketball but so were Tennessee’s guards as a whole. The Vols’ front court was the only group that really struggled against the ball pressure as they accounted for six of the nine turnovers.
Tennessee’s team also recorded 22 assists to 11 turnovers. After a bad first week of taking care of the basketball, the Vols did a solid job of it in the second week of the season.
Final Stats
Up Next
Tennessee is back in the action on Thursday when they head to The Bahamas for the Baha Mar Tournament. The Vols face Virginia in their first game at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday night before facing either Baylor or St. John’s on Friday night.
