This team wants to make sure you keep the media guide handy.
When Admiral Schofield put 30 on #1 Gonzaga, we called it the best performance of the post-Chris Lofton era. We mentioned Grant Williams’ 37 points in Memorial Gymnasium last season – the most for any Vol since Ron Slay’s 38 in 2003 – as a footnote. In his two games against Vanderbilt last year, Williams attempted 15 free throws each time.
I feel like any attempt to say something clever about what happened tonight is a disservice to its greatness. Here it is:
Grant Williams: 10-of-15 FG, 23-of-23 FT, 43 points, 8 rebounds, 4 blocks.
The school record for points at Tennessee is 51 by Tony White vs Auburn in 1987. White also had 49 against Florida State the same year. Ron Widby scored 50 against LSU in 1967. Carl Widseth scored 47 against Auburn in 1956.
Next on the list is 43 points, which is the career high of Allan Houston, Reggie Johnson, Bernard King, Ernie Grunfeld…and now, Grant Williams.
And #1 Tennessee beat Vanderbilt 88-83 in overtime.
Teams Won’t Lay Down For Tennessee
The Vols jumped Alabama 16-4 in the first eight minutes, Vanderbilt 15-2 in the first five minutes. Perhaps you, like me, were kicking back to enjoy another beat down.
It didn’t happen Saturday, and certainly didn’t happen tonight. Credit Vanderbilt; Alabama is on the bubble, but the Commodores were 0-5 in SEC play and staring swiftly down the barrel of 0-6 after those first five minutes. But what a difference being hot from three makes.
Vanderbilt was shooting 33% on the year from the arc coming in. In SEC play:
- 6-of-20 (30%) vs Ole Miss
- 6-of-25 (24%) at Georgia
- 7-of-25 (28%) at Kentucky
- 7-of-21 (33%) vs South Carolina
- 5-of-19 (26%) vs Mississippi State
Tonight: 10-of-21 (48%). Aaron Nesmith, Saben Lee, Matt Ryan, and Joe Toye went 10-of-18.
It made a huge difference, and the Vols had no answer on the other end: 5-of-20 (25%) from the arc, including 0-for-6 from Admiral Schofield. It’s the same percentage the Vols shot against Alabama. Yet the Vols walked away winners both times.
There was some reffin’ going on in both games, no doubt. Tennessee benefitted from a lightning-fast travel call on John Petty against Bama, and a hook-but-maybe-not-a-hold, letter-of-the-law flagrant foul in the final minutes of regulation tonight. But if you’re looking for why Tennessee won, look to the guy who knocked down both those free throws, then immediately scored on the ensuing inbounds.
Also, before that sequence, with the Vols down five and in need of a spark, this happened:
When Bone threw that ball, I swear I thought it was meant for Alexander. I’m glad we won to preserve a number one ranking, and I’m glad for Williams’ 43 points. But also, this dunk could not happen in a game Tennessee lost.
This game got bananas in the final minute, then again in overtime. But with the game on the line after a Saben Lee free throw put Vandy up one with 20 seconds to play, Grant Williams had one more and-one in him, then a great close out in the corner without fouling on a Vanderbilt three.
Vanderbilt shot way above their average, to their credit, and found ways to disrupt what Tennessee wanted to do. The Vols got nothing from Schofield offensively and stayed cold from the arc.
But Grant Williams was enough.
He scored all of Tennessee’s points in overtime (10) until Jordan Bone’s free throws with six seconds left. In the last ten minutes of regulation, he scored all of Tennessee’s points except Bowden’s dunk and Schofield’s runner. That’s 27 of Tennessee’s last 33 points in 15 minutes of game time.
That dude is going in the rafters. Tennessee plays on as number one.
You know what it was right? Williams saw the way that Bama player took over last game and seemed like an unstoppable force for evil and he said, “if some guy at ALABAMA?!? can play like a one man shooting machine I’m pretty sure I can do that and way more. ”
Williams was just too VOL too let a Bama player have any kind of good thing and he’s way too VOL too let Vandy beat us this time.
#legend
Wow, wow, wow!! This team is going to drive me to drink. I am from Nashville and my wife graduated from Vandy, plus I have many friends that went to Vandy. Thank goodness we won or I would have had to bury my head in the sand to keep from hearing about how we repeated history. WVU will be another big challenge this weekend albeit on our home floor… lets Go Vols… keep it going but with a little more breathing room.
Yes, Vandy led Kentucky at the half at Rupp and pushed them to a single digit win. And, yes, Vandy is better than their 0-6 result in SEC would lead you to believe. But we were horrible after the first 5 minutes of the game. We could not guard the elbow action. It ddin’t help that Vandy was out of its mind from 3FG land. They were 3-6 on 3FG in the 1H. In a 4 minute span in 2H, they hit 4 straight 3s to tie the game at 55. They were 7-11 from 3 at that point. After… Read more »
These are all first world problems when you’re 17-1 and ranked #1 in the country, but I’m officially moving my status to Mildly Concerned re: the Vols. Since halftime of the Arkansas game, they have been lit up on defense, really struggling to stay in front of guards and the elbow action was tearing them up last night. They’ve fallen more than 15 spots in KenPom in the last 3 games down to 34th in AdjD. That just puts so much pressure on your offense, and it took a once in a generation performance from Grant to save them last… Read more »
The defense must improve or we won’t have first world problems any more. We have to fix this before we play the challenging part of our schedule (Feb 16th at Rupp). We have been lucky at least twice (Bama, Vandy) as either the team or a hot player (Petty) cooled off at a cricial time. I’d hate to lose an easy game when we need cushion for the last brutal month of the season.
I was at the Allan Houston game against LSU and it needs to be pointed out that Chris Jackson scored 49 in that same game. It also needs to be pointed out that Dale Brown incredibly had two of the greatest players in college basketball history on that team (Jackson and Shaq, along with 7-foot future NBA disappointment Stanley Roberts) and rode them all the way to a 3rd place finish in the SEC (in a year in which Kentucky was reeling from NCAA sanctions and finished 5th), an opening-round loss to 13-18 Auburn in the SEC Tournament, and a… Read more »
More Knight on Brown, maybe my favorite quote from any coach ever, excerpted from the LA Times (http://articles.latimes.com/1987-12-24/sports/sp-31109_1_bob-knight):
Bob Knight, Indiana basketball coach, responding to a story in which Lousiana State Coach Dale Brown took some shots at him, recalled last season’s Midwest Regionals in which LSU led Indiana, 75-66, with only four minutes left.
“It didn’t look good,” Knight said. “In fact, my assistants had just about given up, and so had I. Then I looked down toward the other bench, and I saw Dale Brown standing there. I knew then that we had a chance.”
Indiana won, 77-76.
HT I feel the same way about Calipari. One coach said he was worth 6-8 points to the other team due to bad in game strategy and another used the old “he does less with more talent than any other coach alive”.
That quote is an all-timer.