Tennessee Basketball: Three takeaways from Vols’ 65-52 win vs Duke

Tennessee basketball heads to New York City and moves onto the Sweet 16 after a 65-52 win over the Duke Blue Devils.

Tennessee basketball put on a show last Saturday and proved to the world that they are legit contenders and are not to be overlooked. It seemed like everyone across the country thought that Duke would destroy the Vols, but they were proved wrong.

Tennessee basketball’s physicality.

The Vols came into the game on Saturday with one thing on their minds, dominate. From the first whistle to the last, the Vols dominated the Blue Devils in every aspect of the game. More specifically, it was the physical aspect of the game.

Duke is a highly talented, young, and athletic team. On the other hand, the Vols looked like a G-League team and are filled with Seniors and physical players that can ball out like any other. Rick Barnes put together a perfect game plan, turned the game into a slugfest, and watched his team do what they do best, scrap around and win by physically dominating the opponent.

Duke looked terrified the entire game; they looked like a lost puppy and had no answers to the Vols suffocating defense and brute force on both ends of the court.

Here is what head coach Rick Barnes said in the post-game interview about their physicality, according to rockytopinsider.com:

"“Well, we feel like we’re at our best when we can do that. Really do. We know we play in a league where there’s a premium placed on physicality certainly, but we wanted to be physical. Obviously didn’t like the way it started with Uros, I didn’t like any part of that, he gets too emotional about it. We want to play within the rules in terms of — as physical as we want to be, we don’t want to foul.But Duke is a really good defensive team. They do it a little bit different, but they’re extremely effective with it. We felt ball pressure, our ball screen defense, we’ve talked about it, because they do a lot with it. But we also felt like it was important that we attack on the offensive end and try to get a little bit more of an up tempo game because they’re very good at executing in the half court. And part of the physicality was to try to bring fatigue in by playing a quicker game.”"

Olivier Nkamhoua took over the game.

Tennessee basketball has been desperately looking for a player to step up without point guard Zakai Zeigler, and Olivier did just that in this game. Nkamhoua has been inconsistent at times this year, but he truly stepped up when he needed to the most.

Nkamhoua put up an incredible stat line, was one of the Vols’ best defenders, and wreaked havoc all game. Olivier had 27 points, shooting 75% from 3-point land, 80% from the free-throw line, and 77% from the field.

Here is what Rick Barnes had to say about the play from Olivier Nkamhoua, according to rockytopinsider.com:

"“Olivier played great basketball today; certainly Santi does, what he does every night. Just a total team effort, and just really proud of our guys for what we’ve gone through the last month. I’ll tell you what, no team deserves more than what’s happened — what these guys have gone out and earned this week, and I’m just so proud. As a coaching staff we’re proud of them, and looking forward to getting going next week.”"

Tennessee basketball won the rebound battle.

Rebounds have been a struggle throughout the year, but the Vols crashed the boards harder than ever against Duke. They got several offensive rebounds and created even more possessions which they were able to capitalize on all game. The Vols finished the game outrebounding the Blue Devils 35 to 30

Rick Barnes had this to say about winning the rebound battle, according to rockytopinsider.com:

"“It was. Just simply because what we have talked about all week is what we started the season talking about. We haven’t changed really much in terms of our philosophy. We’ve had to mix and match some things, but we’ve said we’re going to play great defense, we’re going to rebound the ball. Not just defensively. We had a couple of key offensive rebounds that were huge. We can’t be the team that we want to be defensive if we don’t finish it with a rebound. And we knew with their length, they’re the longest team in the country, that we were going to have to get great production from everybody, and we did.”"