‘We wanted to dominate’: Tennessee played angry while throttling Kentucky in Sweet 16
INDIANAPOLIS — Assistant coach Rod Clark didn’t need much time to think about the question late Friday night inside the Tennessee locker room. Were the Vols pissed off going into the Sweet 16 matchup with Kentucky? Did the regular-season sweep at the hands of the rival Wildcats have this team playing angry?
“To be honest,” Clark said, “very.”
Kentucky came to Knoxville on January 28 and left with a 78-73 win after Tennessee went an embarrassing 11-for-45 from the 3-point line. The Wildcats won 75-64 at Rupp Arena on February 11, after finishing the game with a 17-4 run.
“Getting swept,” Zakai Zeigler said, “it’s a terrible feeling. Especially to a team that’s your rival … they did what they had to do and we didn’t do it.”
That feeling was why Tennessee was so ready to demolish Kentucky 78-65 Friday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, advancing to the Elite Eight for a second straight season after leading by as many as 19 points in the first half, leading for over 37 minutes and trailing for only 32 seconds.
“I think guys had a huge chip on their shoulder coming into this game,” Clark said. “They felt like we never played against these guys giving our best effort or really playing a basketball game. There was no indication of Tennessee basketball.
“So that was a big thing coming into this game is showing them who we really are, giving them our best shot, trying to give them a good taste of what Tennessee basketball looks like. And I think we did a good job of that.”
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Tennessee basketball was holding Kentucky to a season-low 65 points, out-rebounding the Wildcats by 10 and scoring 19 second-chance points off 14 offensive rebounds.
“We love to rebound,” Jahmai Mashack said. “When you have a team that has the roster that we do, that everybody is on the same page and we all love doing the dirty things, the dirty work, you’re going to get success from things like that, man.”
Tennessee basketball was forcing 12 Kentucky turnovers and allowing only 10 assists. It was holding Koby Brea to five points on 1-for-7 shooting, after he scored 29 points and went 6-for-9 from three in the first two games.
“Our whole thing,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said, “was we have to guard, we have to guard, we have to guard.”
Mashack said the focus was guarding for four minutes at a time. Dominate every segment of the game. Be relentless between every timeout.
“To not let our foot off the gas,” he said. “We didn’t want to just win by a little bit. We wanted to dominate, especially defensively. We wanted this to be the best defensive game we played all year.”
Kentucky made 24 3-pointers in the first two meetings, going 12-for-24 both times. The Cats finished 6-for-15 Friday night.
Tennessee never led by more than three points in either of the first two games against Kentucky. The Vols led for less than four total minutes in the two losses and trailed for over 70 minutes.
“We wanted to prove that those two games that we lost in the regular season against them,” Igor Milcic Jr. said, “that that was not us. And we went out and showed it.”
‘We just took care of business and we shut them down’
The 19-point lead in the first half Friday night was built despite Chaz Lanier scoring just six points of his own, after scoring 49 points in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament last week at Rupp Arena in Lexington.
“We just came out with that determination and everybody was on edge,” Lanier said after finishing with 17 points. “We know that they got us twice early in the year and we needed to come out here and handle business.”
There were no motivational speeches needed leading into the game. What the Vols felt was understood without needing to say a word.
“It was just an understanding throughout the whole team,” Lanier said, “that they got us twice and we shouldn’t have let that happen.”
With a spot in the Elite Eight on the line, in a stadium full of Kentucky fans, Tennessee players knew it wasn’t going to happen again.
“We knew it was going to be a hostile environment,” Milicic said. “We knew that there was going to be a lot of Kentucky fans here, but we just took care of business and we shut them down. And now they can all go home to Kentucky, I guess.”
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