Tennessee basketball: Team awards for 2021-2022 season

Most Valuable Player: Santiago Vescovi

There’s a reason Santiago Vescovi played more minutes for Tennessee basketball than everybody else. Sure, he was second on the team to Kennedy Chandler in scoring with a 0.6 point differential, but the 6’3″ 188-pound sharpshooter was too efficient of a scoring threat to not top the list.

The only criticism of Vescovi is that he wasn’t aggressive enough. For the year, he shot 40.3 percent from the three-point line and led the team in true shooting percentage at .589, which is impressive given that most of his play was from the perimeter. He also was solid on other stats as well, averaging over three assists and over one and a half steals.

Averaging nearly four and a half rebounds, one more than Chandler, helped Vescovi on here. However, then there are the advanced metrics. While Chandler led in PER, Vescovi led in win shares, win shares per 40 minutes and box plus minutes. Simply put, he was the best player on the team by every metric.

Runner-up: Kennedy Chandler

We already mentioned Chandler’s accomplishments on the previous slide. The one thing holding him back here was efficiency from the free throw line, as he shot 60.6 percent from the stripe. If that was up, he probably would have won the award outright.

What’s clear, though, is that Tennessee basketball thrived with these two in the backcourt, and the guard play in general was elite when you add Josiah-Jordan James and Zakai Zeigler to the mix. If at least one other player between Vescovi and James returns along with Zeigler, this team should be in great shape for next year.