Vols, Aggies arrive at 20-7 from very different directions
Tennessee and Texas A&M are both 20-7 and nationally ranked entering their Tuesday night showdown in College Station, but they have reached this point from very different directions.
The No. 11 Volunteers are outside the Associated Press top-10 for the first time since early December, having entered February ranked No. 2 before stumbling to a 2-4 mark this month. The No. 25 Aggies are ranked for the first time since being No. 24 after their 2-0 start, which preceded a trip to the Myrtle Beach Classic, where they were thumped by Murray State and humiliated by Colorado.
Texas A&M dropped five nonconference games, including a 67-62 home loss just before Christmas to a Wofford team that currently sits at 15-14, but the surging Aggies have won five straight and are 12-2 in Southeastern Conference play and just a game back of Alabama.
“I don’t think anything flipped,” Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark told reporters Monday before the team flew to Texas. “They were always my darkhorse team early in the year when everybody was making their rankings. I always said Texas A&M was a team a lot of people weren’t talking about. Buzz Williams is a great coach, and he’s one of those guys who has always had his players adapt to his toughness.
“They’ve had players come in from other schools who came in and had to adjust to him, and once they did, they’ve taken off.”
The Aggies took off last year a little too late, as they couldn’t overcome a 5-9 league start despite four straight victories to close the regular season and three more wins in the SEC tournament before losing 65-50 to Tennessee in the title game. They went to the NIT, reaching the championship contest before falling 73-72 to Xavier.
Texas A&M has five players averaging at least nine points a game, with sophomore guard Wade Taylor IV (15.6) and senior guard Tyrece Radford (13.4) leading the way, but the team’s hottest player is Dexter Dennis. The 6-foot-5, 220-pound graduate transfer from Wichita State amassed
17 points and 10 rebounds in Saturday’s 69-60 triumph at Missouri and had 14 points and 11 rebounds in last Wednesday’s 62-56 win over Arkansas.
“His story is not being told at the rate that it should,” Williams said in a news conference at Mizzou. “The impact he’s had on our program I have never seen in my career as a head coach. He had an internship he had to do last summer, so he wasn’t able to be a part of what we do. He showed up the first day of school, and what he’s been able to do for our program and team — everybody has done a lot of good things, but the impact he’s had on both ends of the floor makes it hard to argue that we wouldn’t be where we are without him.
“He’s the same person every single day and the best listener I’ve ever coached.”
Dennis is on track to be the SEC’s top rebounding guard this season, and it’s rebounding in general that Williams believes has produced the biggest difference since the calendar flipped. In Saturday’s win, the Aggies racked up 41 rebounds to 23 by the Tigers.
“How we go about rebounding is probably too complex at times,” he said, “and we’re not very good at it in any year in November and December. We coach it. We teach it. There are specific metrics.
“We have a rebounding effort report card that we do every game. It’s the thing that I coach.”
Tennessee took down the league’s hottest team last Wednesday with its 68-59 defeat of the Crimson Tide, and the Vols did so without senior guard Josiah-Jordan James and freshman forward Julian Phillips. The Vols didn’t have that duo for Saturday’s 66-54 loss at Kentucky, and they are viewed as questionable for the tip at 7 on ESPN.
“Obviously we want those guys back, and they’re going to be back and healthy and ready to play when it’s time,” Vols senior forward Olivier Nkamhoua said. “We’ve got to find a way to win with what we have, and that’s going to hold true until the end of the year, because you never know who’s going to be available.”
Said Clark: “We do keep the next-man-up mentality, but I think it’s obvious that everybody sees we do miss those guys. We miss their length, and we miss their ability to get to the rim.”
FOULING PROBLEM
Tennessee sophomore guard Zakai Zeigler has committed 15 fouls in his last four games and only reached 30 minutes of playing time against Alabama.
“When you foul, don’t think it’s not you,” Clark said. “We have different referee crews every game, and if they keep calling the same fouls, you’re probably fouling them. Accept it, and go in the film room, sit back and have the mentality of having to get better. We need him on the floor.
“His teammates Saturday told him in the locker room, ‘Sometimes you put us in a hole. We get that you’re playing hard, but we need you on the floor.’”
ODDS AND ENDS
The Vols are 11-6 lifetime against Texas A&M, which includes a 4-2 mark in College Station. … Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes, who previously spent 17 seasons at Texas, has a 31-9 record against the Aggies. … Tennessee and Texas A&M lost by a combined 40 points in November to Colorado, which is 15-13 overall and 7-10 in Pac-12 play.