March Madness: Tennessee Vols’ flawless performance vs. Longwood won’t be replicated
Was there anything Tennessee basketball did in its first March Madness game of 2022 that we could criticize? The Vols were nearly perfect as they beat the Longwood Lancers 88-56 to advance to face the Michigan Wolverines in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32.
Some of these things are applicable to what they’ve done all year. They play suffocating defense, and they held an elite shooting offense to under 60 points. Ball movement has been superb, and they had 29 assists to just 12 turnovers.
There are multiple threats from three with Santiago Vescovi leading the way, and, well, Vescovi led the team with 18 points today specifically due to his three-point shooting. All of that could last throughout March Madness for Rocky Top. However, many of the elements that made the Longwood game a blowout won’t.
Let’s start with that three-point shooting. Vescovi tied a school NCAA Tournament record with six three-pointers in the game. He went 6-of-8 on the day from beyond the arc for an amazing 75 percent. That was part of the team as a whole going 14-of-24 from three.
Look, the Vols are a solid three-point shooting team. They aren’t good like that, though. As a result, going forward, you can’t expect them to replicate such red-hot shooting. They have been shooting over 40 percent from three ever since the SEC Tournament began, but shooting over 58 percent is entirely different.
Vescovi isn’t even the big story on that. Kennedy Chandler going 3-of-4 from three and Josiah-Jordan James going 3-of-6 from three for 13 and 17 points respectively also won’t be repeated, especially with Zakai Zeigler going 2-of-4 off the bench. They all just happened to be hot in this one. Usually, one or two have that hand.
James specifically has had really bad offensive droughts from outside, and it’s a solid bet he’ll have one of those again in March Madness. Chandler and Zeigler are both solid but can’t stay hot like that forever from beyond the arc. Simply put, that won’t continue.
Beyond the three-point shooting, though, the thing that kept them in control was their inside presence. John Fulkerson scored 15 points and was the dominant force early on. There’s a reason for that, though. Longwood doesn’t have any true bigs.
Nobody on Griff Aldrich’s team who plays significant minutes is taller than 6’7″, so Barnes was smart to go down low from the start. The inability to stop Fulkerson is actually what led to so many open threes to begin with, and that’s a huge reason the Vols hit so many.
It won’t be the same going forward. Heck, in their next matchup against the Michigan Wolverines, UT has to deal with 7’1″ center Hunter Dickinson and 6’11” freshman power forward potential lottery pick Moussa Diabate. Rocky Top certainly won’t have the advantage there.
After that, the teams will most likely only get better, meaning they’ll have an even more elite inside presence. Given the way they are constructed and Olivier Nkamhoua’s season-ending injury, there’s no way UT is equipped to dominate inside to create spacing consistently like they did in this game.
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Defense, great ball movement and reliable three-point shooting can all help carry Rick Barnes’ team in March Madness. However, don’t count on the three-point shot being as elite as it was Thursday, and don’t count on the inside dominance you saw. That won’t continue, and it’s what spurred this perfect game.