Tennessee Basketball: Vols dominate the Catamounts in TBA

Tennessee basketball hosted the Western Carolina Catamounts on Tuesday night in TBA and secured a solid win in the latter stages of their non-conference schedule. The Catamounts came out hot taking an early 6-0 lead, and if it wasn’t for an Igor Milicic chase-down block to break the momentum it could have been a bigger deficit for the Vols early. However, that block seemed to get the Vols going as they ended the first half on a 38-9 run. Western Carolina’s plan was to shoot a ton of threes and fight like hell for offensive rebounds. To their credit, they did secure 9 offensive boards in the first half, but the makes from deep just weren’t there as they went 5-28 in the first half.

The second half was more of the same. Zakai Zeigler was one assist away from the 2nd triple-double in Tennessee history before being subbed out in the final minutes. I don’t see why Rick Barnes couldn’t let him try to get one assist in a blowout win, but that is just the culture of the program. Team accomplishment is the number 1 priority and in the final minutes of a lopsided victory, he rewards the back end of the roster players who put in tons of work and rarely get to see the floor. Chaz Lanier and Jordan Gainey combined for 36 points on the evening and a solid performance from Darlinstone Dubar saw him score 13 points. Felix Okpara bounced back after not scoring for 2 straight games with 9 points and 9 rebounds as well.

All things considered, it was a good night for Tennessee which ended in an 84-36 victory. The Vols have two more games to play before their first conference game on January 4th as they will host MTSU next Monday and Norfolk State on New Year’s Eve. The next two games will be the final tune-ups before the real season begins and all I would ask for is a little less sloppiness and better shooting early in games. Other than that there isn’t too much to complain about for our #1 ranked Tennessee Volunteers.