'Our confidence has to be sky high': Can surviving a close call help Tennessee in the Sweet 16?

Tennessee stared down a disaster Saturday night in Charlotte. One possession at a time, one missed shot after another, what was a 12-point lead with 12 minutes left slowly dwindled away against Texas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. 

Down to four with just over two minutes left. Down to two one possession later. Down to one with 34 seconds left. 

But the Vols made seven free throws in the final 48 seconds and got enough stops on the defensive end to survive a 22-for-65 shooting performance in the 62-58 win in the Midwest Region. 

Tennessee went an unthinkable 3-for-25 from the 3-point line. The Vols missed their first 11 attempts, finally got a make from Zakai Zeigler, then missed another nine straight. They were 1-for-21 from three and lived to tell the tale. 

Now No. 2 Tennessee (26-8) is moving on to the Sweet to face No. 3 Creighton (25-9) Friday (10:09 p.m. Eastern Time, TBS/truTV) at Little Caesar’s Arena in Detroit. 

“I think going to the Sweet 16 game,” assistant coach Rod Clark said Saturday night in the Tennessee locker room, “our confidence has to be sky high because we shot that bad.

“We didn’t have our best offensive night and we still pulled it out by just being gritty, getting enough stops, rebounding the ball and making free throws.”

Dalton Knecht had 18 points and made four free throws in the final minute, but he was just 5-for-18 from the field and went 1-for-8 at the 3-point line. Zeigler played all 40 minutes, finishing with six points, seven assists, four rebounds and three steals, but he was 2-for-12 from the field and matched Knecht’s 1-for-8 on threes.

Jordan Gainey and Santiago Vescovi combined to go 0-for-7 from three, but also combined for five steals, with Zeigler getting another three.

“This is a team that I think can win in a multitude of ways, man,” Clark said. “If we’ve got to grind you out and win a game like that, when we’re not making shots, we got to win with defense, we can do it. 

“If we have to play in a shootout, I think we can do it. I think we’re a really balanced team and we just find a way.”

The same team that won 103-92 at Kentucky in February closed out the outright SEC regular-season title in a 66-59 slugfest at South Carolina in March. The same team that beat Auburn with 92 points at home won at Alabama by holding the Crimson Tide to 74. 

The Texas game was just another example. Even if it wasn’t pretty, it did the job.

“I feel like that game really just showed that we don’t have to shoot the ball well to win games,” Zeigler said. “If we play the way we need to play on the other end, we can still come out with the win.”

Tennessee’s 83-49 win over Saint Peter’s in the first round on Thursday was the second-biggest margin of victory in an NCAA Tournament game in program history, one point shy of the 35-point win over Long Beach State in 2007. 

The Vols beat Wright State by 26 points in the first round in 2018, but lost to Loyola-Chicago in the second round. They beat Longwood by 32 in the first round in 2022, only to get tripped up by Michigan two days later.

Tennessee’s lone Elite Eight run started with a 62-59 win over San Diego State in 2010, with a Melvin Goins 3-pointer with 18 seconds left helping hold off the Aztecs. The Vols advanced to the fourth round with a 76-73 win over Ohio State in the Sweet 16.

Maybe surviving a close game, and all the adversity that came with it, means good things are ahead.

“If you don’t win that game,” James said, “you don’t move forward. And it’s a different game. Didn’t shoot the ball well after coming off of a game where it felt like we probably couldn’t miss. And so it just shows our toughness, our resiliency to be able to win different brands of basketball and always having each other’s backs.”

Tennessee withstood the Texas challenge. The Vols weathered the storm, as James put it.

“I think experience is the best teacher,” he added, “and we have a lot of experience in this locker room and we rely on that heavily. And it got us to this point.”

The Vols just want to get to the next point. They want to keep surviving and keep advancing any way they have to do it.

“March Madness,” Jonas Aidoo said, “is all about moments like this.”

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