Tennessee Guards Impress Pearl, Help Wear Out Tigers

Kentucky's offense will be challenged by Tennessee's defense tonight. (Vicky Graff Photo)

Top-ranked Auburn managed to hold off No. 8 Tennessee 53-51 Saturday to remain the Southeastern Conference’s only unbeaten team at 6-0 in league play.

The loss dropped the Vols, the nation’s No. 1 when SEC play started, to 4-3 in league play and tied for fifth place going into tonight’s game with visiting Kentucky. The Cats are now 3-3 and 10th in the league standings after losing at Vanderbilt Saturday.

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl certainly appreciated how good the Vols are even though his team managed to win.

“Those are some of the best guards we’re going to face. Those guys don’t take possessions off defensively. Catches were difficult. Shots were contested. They turned us over 11 times. They were all forced,” said Pearl.  “I’m sure that wasn’t a very pretty game on national television because it was so difficult to score.

“I knew it was going to be low scoring. I just knew offense was going to difficult. (Tennessee coach) Rick Barnes’ teams play the right way. They don’t take possessions off. They don’t beat themselves. I think at the end of the game, both teams were exhausted.”

Guard Chaz Lanier leads Tennessee in scoring at 18 points per game and has hit 71 3-pointers while shooting 42.3 percent from deep. Guard Zakai Zeigler averages 12.3 points and 34.2 minutes per game. Zeigler also has 150 assists, an average of 7.1 per game, against  just 62 turnovers. He also has a team-high 42 steals and Barnes calls him the “heartbeat” of the team.

“Ziegler plays the whole game, virtually. So at the end of the day, it’s just a battle of attrition. They ask him to do a lot. He has to do a lot. I think the biggest thing would be … now he still had five assists and one turnover. Incredible. Just incredible,” Pearl said after Auburn’s win.

“And Chaz Lanier is a guy you can’t leave or just make him put the ball down the floor and you’ve got to arrive and catch. And he made a couple, which was scary, but he had to work so hard defensively also.

“Our guys were exhausted. I told our guys before the game, ‘You’re going to be more tired after this game than any game we play all year long, because Tennessee, if you’re going to guard them, you’re going to wear yourself out guarding them’. But at the same time, we didn’t have the kind of energy we needed to execute offensively either.”

Kentucky fell behind by 14 points at halftime at Vanderbilt and lost despite a dramatic comeback that had UK in front by seven points with eight minutes to play. Kentucky’s bigger problem again was scoring against a tough, physical defense but Pearl nothing comes easy on offense in league play for any team.

“The book is out on everybody. Why was it so difficult to score? We know what they do. They know what we do. We put players in good positions. They put their players in good positions. What’s plan B? What’s plan C? And we got to come up with that,” Pearl said after beating Tennessee.

Barnes said it was difficult to explain the physicality of SEC play unless you have experienced it. He said several of his younger players had a “learning” experience at Auburn even though the Vols are regarded as one of the league’s more physical teams.

“I told the team, we got a chance to be so much better. I think we can get better, but we’ve gotta get better as individuals. Every one of us as coaches, every player. But I just know that we’re just coming to the end of January and a lot of basketball left,” Barnes said after the Auburn loss. “We want to be at our best at the end of the year. We’ve got guys that I know are gonna continue to work to try to do that.”