It didn’t take much for Tennessee basketball to rebound from losing to the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden last Tuesday thanks to an awful shooting night. The Vols returned home and secured a dominating victory.
Ranked No. 13 in the AP Poll and No. 14 in the Coaches Poll, UT beat the UNC Greensboro Spartans 76-36 Saturday afternoon to improve to 7-2 on the year. UNC Greensboro scored the first bucket, but the Vols then went on an 11-0 run and never looked back.
With the loss, the Spartans, led by first-year head coach Mike Jones, fell to 7-3 and will next visit Maryland for a two-game road trip, at the Towson Tigers Tuesday and at the UMBC Retrievers Thursday. Rocky Top will next host the USC Upstate Spartans Tuesday. Here are three things we learned from Tennessee basketball’s win.
1. Defense was dominant in every way.
The Vols set a record Saturday, as 36 points is the fewest they have ever allowed at Thompson-Boling Arena. That’s because of a dominant defense that did everything right. They contested shots, which is why UNC Greensboro was 14-of-38 from the field and 3-of-16 from the three-point line, and they forced turnovers, 25 to be exact.
Standing out among those turnovers were 13 steals. Santiago Vescovi led the way with four of them, but Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack each had two as well. Then John Fulkerson dominated under the basket with three blocks, as the team had four on the day.
2. Offense finally produced without Kennedy Chandler.
This has been a bit of a concern for Tennessee basketball this year. What will they do if Kennedy Chandler is having an off-day? Well, he had one in this game, going 2-for-9 from the field and scoring just nine points. However, he did the little things to make up for it, including hitting all four free throws and dishing out six assists with just one turnover.
Those assists were helped by other guys scoring. Three other players had double figures. One of the standout players was Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, who seemed to finally live up to his five-star billing, scoring 12 points on 6-of-10 shooting, securing a block and getting a steal.
3. Three-point shooting returned.
Here is the other reason UT could score without Chandler. After an awful shooting night against Texas Tech, the three-point shot returned. Vescovi, who, by the way, had eight assists, was 2-of-5 from three en route to 12 points. Zeigler was 3-of-6 from three, and the team as a whole was 13-of-35 from three.
Surprisingly, Josiah-Jordan James was Tennessee basketball’s standout here. He went 4-of-7 from the three-point line en route to 12 points. James is a star defender and distributor, so it’s ironic that Vescovi did more of those things in this game while James was the scorer, but both were great in this game.