Rick Barnes praises Vols after gritty win at Alabama on quiet night for Dalton Knecht

No. 4 Tennessee held on to defeat No. 14 Alabama 81-74 on the road in front of a hostile crowd in Tuscaloosa on Saturday night. And the Vols did so without a heroic performance from the SEC’s leading scorer, Dalton Knecht.

Head coach Rick Barnes’ squad held the nation’s highest-scoring team over 15 points below their season average (90.9) while at least seven of his players scored at least eight points or more during the matchup. Barnes’ praised his team’s depth and experience as a main reason Tennessee was able to steal a big win on the road.

“We’ve got a lot of these guys that have been with us for a long time and they’ve been in games like this,” Barnes said postgame. “And obviously, we’ve got the utmost respect for Nate (Oats) and his staff and what he’s done in his program in his time here. It was going to be a difficult game if we could stay in it for as long as we could, knowing how explosive they can be.

“But Jahmai Mashack, Santi (Vescovi), Josiah-(Jordan) James, guys that have been around for a long time, they made a lot of plays, especially Josiah getting on the glass. ‘Z’ (Zakai Zeigler) what he does.”

While Knecht contributed 13 points, he struggled to hit the mark from deep and instead, saw Zeigler score 18 points during the contest. He’s now averaging 17.5 points over his last two games. James finished with an 11-point, 13-rebound double-double while Jonas Aidoo finished the list of scorers in double figures with a 12-point performance on the night.

Tennessee entered halftime with a two-point deficit after a hard-fought first half. Alabama began to build on its lead after the halftime break, leading by as many as seven points at the under 12-minute media timeout. From there, the Vols outscored the Crimson Tide 30-16 until the final buzzer.

“Both teams were playing hard. Both teams were battling,” Barnes continued. “There were a lot of individual battles going on. … From my standpoint, being on the bench, at no point in time do you see them flinch. They just kept saying, ‘Hey, we have to stay in it, keep grinding, keep grinding.’ And they did that. And again, I got to give credit, all the credit, to the players. Really the older guys, because I thought they were really terrific.”

The win keeps Tennessee in sole possession of first place in the SEC standings. With less than a week left in the regular season, the Vols will have their work cut out for them. They take on No. 18 South Carolina on the road on Wednesday before finishing things up with senior day this Saturday against No. 16 Kentucky.