Vols lost lead but not their tenacity
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A big smile on his face, Tennessee junior forward Grant Williams spied a Big Orange fan standing in a corridor of Nationwide Arena on Sunday afternoon and said, “Sorry we made you all panic.”
“That’s OK,” the woman replied, “as long as you win.” The Volunteers won against Iowa, all right. Won 83-77 in overtime after leading by 21 points at halftime and by 25 points, 44-19, late in the opening period.
“We just weren’t a real smart team when we had the lead,” fourth-year Vols coach Rick Barnes said after watching his squad secure the program’s first Sweet 16 appearance since 2014. “They took advantage of our silly turnovers.”
But despite those 11 second-half miscues after turning it over just six times in the opening frame, the Vols never panicked over those five overtime minutes. Instead — thanks to two free throws from Williams and a huge deep 3-pointer from Jordan Bone — they scored the first five points of the extra period to end any reasonable concern about the outcome.
“I don’t know how I got it there,” said Williams of his pass to Bone for that crucial triple. “But it got there, and he made the shot.”
And at least partly because he made it, the second-seeded Vols not only avoided what would have been one of the most embarrassing losses in NCAA tournament history, they moved on to a Thursday night South Region semifinal contest against No. 3 seed Purdue inside the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky. South No. 1 seed North Carolina will face fifth-seeded Auburn in the region’s
other semifinal.
“This time of year, it’s about winning,” said senior forward Admiral Schofield, whose 19 points tied Williams for gamehigh scoring honors. “Surviving and advancing. All I can say is, ‘Go Vols!’”
But how far can they go blowing double-figure leads such as this one to seemingly inferior foes before the eyes of March? This was the second time in two NCAA tourney games that sizable second-half cushions have evaporated completely.
“The team you saw in the first half is what won 31 games,” Schofield said. “We have to be consistent in that aspect.”
You would think so, but the Vols have had a habit of playing one good half and one bad half all season, and not always the same half. They were less than stellar in the second half at LSU. They were awful throughout the Southeastern Conference title game against Auburn. They were marvelous for both halves of their Knoxville win over Kentucky.
“Once it got to overtime, I thought we really responded the way we needed to,” Barnes said. “But it shouldn’t have gotten to that point.”
Indeed, for almost the entirety of Sunday’s opening half, the Vols looked every bit the team that held the country’s No. 1 ranking for much of the winter. At halftime, they led 49-28 on the scoreboard, 23-16 in rebounds and were shooting 51.4 percent from the floor to just 32 percent by Iowa.
Then the second half began, and by the start of the first media timeout at 15:18, the Vols’ lead had been trimmed from 49-28 to 51-37, a 9-2 run.
“At halftime —obviously it wasn’t the start we wanted — we had a decision to make,” said Iowa freshman Joe Wieskamp, who finished with 11 points. “We could either fold and hand it to them, or we could fight back. I think we showed that in the second half.”
Said Barnes: “(Iowa) just got back in it. When you have a lead like that, you can’t turn it over the way we did.”
If anything was surprising about the Hawkeyes’ comeback beyond the fact that it happened at all, it’s that it was accomplished without a plethora of 3-pointers.
Unlike the Vols’ first-round win against Colgate on Friday — when the Raiders buried nine triples in the final half —Iowa hit just four in Sunday’s second half after hitting three in the first. The Vols actually hit one more 3-pointer for the game.
“We put a game plan together,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “We know it’s not going to be perfect. It never is. But what you hope you get is perfect effort. And that’s what we got (in the second half).”
Despite that perfect effort by Iowa for one half, the Vols are now halfway to the program’s first Final Four.
Asked to assess their chances, McCaffery said: “They’ve got a lot of weapons. They play both ends. They play defense. They share the ball. They have go-to guys. They’re going to be a tough out.”
Especially if they ever learn to play as hard for 40 minutes as they played on Sunday for those first 20 minutes.
Or as Schofield said while propping a large plastic Power T in front of his podium microphone: “We learned (today) we can dominate. We’ve just got to do it for 40 minutes.”
Especially if they want to avoid widespread panic overtaking Big Orange Nation throughout the rest of March Madness.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.