Tennessee Basketball announces sophomore guard Zakai Zeigler suffered torn ACL on Tuesday night
The worst has come true regarding Zakai Ziegler‘s knee injury.
The Tennessee point guard left during the first half in the Volunteers’ game against Arkansas on Tuesday. Zeigler’s knee buckled leaving him in a great deal of pain, as he exited the game with the help from team trainers not able to put weight on his left leg.
Now, Tennessee Basketball has taken to Twitter to reveal that Zeigler suffered a torn ACL.
“Point guard Zakai Zeigler suffered a torn ACL in his left knee during Tuesday night’s win over Arkansas,” tweeted Tennessee Basketball. “The injury ends the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year semifinalist’s
season. The Tennessee basketball family joins all of Vol Nation in lifting up Zakai with love and support.
“We know — beyond all doubt — that Zakai will use this challenge to author an inspiring comeback story. He’ll have our boundless backing every step of the way.”
As Tennessee looks to defend their SEC Tournament crown, losing Zeigler is a huge loss, as coach Rick Barnes elaborated on the injury of his floor general following Tuesday’s game.
“We all hurt for Zakai, we know that he’s hurt, for him to stay down he’s hurt,” Barnes said. “And I think we all felt that, but yet the maturity with our senior class I think took over the game, in terms of okay this is what we’ve got to go do it.”
Nevertheless, Vols were still able to secure a 75-57 win over the Razorbacks without Zeigler, but now will have to band together for the remainder of their games.
“I think they knew it was serious,” Barnes said of his team’s response. “I do, but I think the focus, the emotion didn’t change. I thought they had a great demeanor about themselves, I think we’ve had a great demeanor really for all the games this year.”
Zeigler is the team’s third-leading scorer, their primary ball handler, and best distributor leading the team and SEC in assists per game averaging 5.4. He will definitely be a huge loss for the Volunteers with his play and leadership, and Tennessee will have their work cutout for them over the remainder of the season.
On3’s Kaiden Smith contributed to this article.