Vols win big after first-half struggle
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — The fouls piled up early for the Tennessee men’s basketball team Saturday afternoon — one was called a single second into the game — sending some of its top players to the bench. Meanwhile, host Wake Forest controlled the boards to build some confidence and rhythm during the opening 20 minutes.
The halftime message to the 21st-ranked Volunteers was simple: Play tougher.
Jordan Bowden scored 17 points and Tennessee shot 59 percent in the second half to beat the Demon Deacons 79-60 in the final game for both teams before they begin conference play next Saturday. Tennessee’s Southeastern Conference opener is at Arkansas, while Wake Forest starts its Atlantic Coast Conference schedule at North Carolina.
The Vols (9-2) led by a point at halftime but truly took control by scoring on seven of 10 possessions coming out of the break. That pushed them to a 52-43 lead, a margin that never slipped to fewer than five points as the Demon Deacons struggled for a sustained push.
“We just knew we were going for it,” said Tennessee sophomore Grant Williams, who scored 11 points despite
early foul trouble. “We talked about it in the locker room, that they’re out-toughing us. They were kind of punking us on the rebounding end … and they were driving to the basket and getting fouled.
“So we just knew we had to come out aggressive, and that’s what happened.”
Tennessee’s finishing kick was pretty good, too. After Mitchell Wilbekin’s layup cut the deficit to 66-60 with 4:33 left, the Vols closed the game on a 13-0 run. Bowden and Admiral Schofield each hit key 3-pointers in the flurry, with Bowden’s straightaway 3 to beat the shot clock near the two-minute mark pushing the lead to 75-60.
That was part of Bowden’s 5-for-5 shooting day — all from behind the arc — in 28 minutes after tying his career high of 21 points against Furman during Wednesday’s 66-61 win against Furman in Knoxville.
“He plays off his teammates,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. “We try to tell him to be more aggressive. But I think a lot of it is he knows himself, he knows when he needs to go — and he’s also willing to rest a little bit on offense at times where he can play hard on the defensive end.”
Keyshawn Woods scored 18 points for the Demon Deacons (7-5), who had won six straight while shooting better than 50 percent in each one. But Wake Forest shot just 38 percent in this one, including 9-for-28 (32 percent) after halftime, and finished with 20 turnovers.
Bryant Crawford, Wake Forest’s leading scorer this season with a per-game average of 16.4 points, finished with three points on 1-for-6 shooting with seven turnovers and foul trouble.
The Demon Deacons had seemingly stabilized themselves after a wobbly 0-3 start with their longest winning streak since the 2009-10 season, with this year’s surge including a win against Illinois in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. But they didn’t respond well to Tennessee’s second-half edge.
“We just weren’t making shots in the second half, and when you’re not making shots, you’ve got to defend,” Woods said. “You’ve got to defend to get easy buckets. We didn’t do that.”
The Vols earned their third win against an ACC opponent this season, and they’ll begin SEC play with their only two losses coming against the past two national champions: Villanova at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas in late November and North Carolina at home last weekend.
They were challenged early in Saturday’s game — by foul trouble as much as the Demon Deacons — but persisted.
Williams was called for a foul at the 19:59 mark while using his right arm to establish position to retrieve the opening tip between teammate Kyle Alexander and Wake Forest’s Doral Moore. His second foul and a seat on the bench for the rest of the half came at the 12:32 mark.
Schofield followed with his second foul and joined Williams at the 9:23 mark, and Tennessee totaled 13 first-half fouls.
Barnes said the key to the game was “the way we ended the half, where the game didn’t get away from us where we had all those guys on the bench.”