NCAA Sweet 16 experience brand new to this season’s Vols
Reaching the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 is nothing new for Tennessee basketball or for Volunteers coach Rick Barnes.
For this season’s collection of Vols players, however, it’s a brand new world.
“This second week of basketball is something we’ve never seen before,” sophomore forward Jonas Aidoo told reporters Saturday after the 65-52 downing of Duke in Orlando. “I’m super excited about everything.”
Tennessee will try to continue its quest for the program’s first Final For appearance Thursday night (9 on TBS) when the East Region’s fourth seed takes on ninth-seeded Florida Atlantic inside New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden. The second meeting ever between the Vols (25-10) and Owls (33-3) will take place after third-seeded Kansas State vies with seventhseeded Michigan State.
The East is the only region that lost each of its top two favorites, with top-seeded Purdue losing to 16th-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson on Friday night — FDU then fell to FAU — and with second-seeded Marquette succumbing to Tom Izzo’s Spartans on Sunday evening.
Michigan State easily has the most history of the East quartet with national championships in 1979 and 2000 and with 10 trips to the Final Four, but the Vols traveled to New York on Tuesday with the benefit of five seniors — guards Santiago Vescovi, Josiah-Jordan James and Tyreke Key, and forwards Olivier Nkamhoua and Uros Plavsic.
“What you can count on and bank on this time of year is repetition,” Barnes said Monday in a news conference, “and it’s about being as fresh as you can and as healthy as you can.”
Vescovi, James, Nkamhoua and Plavsic arrived at Tennessee on the heels of Admiral Schofield and Grant Williams leading the 2018-19 Vols to a 31-6 record and a trip to the Sweet 16, while Key used the NCAA’s extra year of eligibility due to the coronavirus outbreak to transfer to the Vols after scoring 1,650 points in his four seasons with Indiana State.
Key spent five years in Terre Haute, with the Sycamores going 72-76 during that time.
“This is why I came back to college — to play in this tournament,” Key said Saturday. “I can’t be happier with my decision to come here.”
Tennessee was older and stronger than the Atlantic Coast
Conference tournament champion Blue Devils, wearing them down in the surprise doubledigit thumping. Against FAU, the Vols will look to combat the 3-point shooting of the Owls.
FAU’s 36.7% accuracy on 3-point tries would lead the Southeastern Conference, and the 26.4 attempts from long range per game would rank second to Alabama.
“They have some guys who have as quick of a release as any guys that we’ve played all year,” Barnes said. “If the pass is there, they don’t need any time to get it off.”
The Owls are 1-1 this season against SEC teams, having won at Florida and having lost at Ole Miss, with each of those outcomes transpiring in November. Those results likely can be tossed when it comes to dissecting Thursday’s showdown, because it’s a brand new game at a brand new time of year.
Even for Tennessee’s veterans.
“We’re doing something that we seniors had not done,” James said. “We’ve made it to the Sweet 16, but we did not want to come this far just to get this far. We’ve got to keep fighting.
“We know it’s not going to get any easier, but we feel like we’re built for it.”
Odds and ends
The only previous meeting between Tennessee and FAU was an 81-62 win by the Vols in Knoxville on Dec. 16, 2015. … The Vols are 22-0 this season when holding foes under 60 points. … Tennessee athletic director Danny White and FAU athletic director Brian White are brothers. … The Vols are just 10-19 alltime in New York, including an 8-18 mark in New York City.