Rick Barnes discusses the impact of losing Zakai Zeigler to injury

Tennessee point guard Zakai Zeigler left the first half and never returned in Tuesday’s game versus Arkansas after suffering a knee injury. Zeigler’s knee buckled leaving him in a great deal of pain, as he exited the game with the help from team trainers not able to put weight on his left leg. Head coach Rick Barnes spoke on the injury of his floor general following the game.

“We all hurt for Zakai, we know that he’s hurt, for him to stay down he’s hurt,” Barnes said. “And I think we all felt that, but yet the maturity with our senior class I think took over the game, in terms of okay this is what we’ve got to go do it.”

The Vols were still able to secure a 75-57 win over the Razorbacks without Zeigler, but may have to do so for the remainder of their games. The final diagnosis has not come out on Zeigler, but the injury seems serious according to Barnes, as he was asked if his team played more inspired follow the injury to one of their leaders.

“I don’t know if that were the case Jimmy, I just know that they know me, like I knew that if he stayed down that long he’s hurt. That’s what I know they know, because they know that he pops right back up every single time when he goes down. And I think they knew it was serious, I do, but I think the focus, the emotion didn’t change. I thought they had a great demeanor about themselves, I think we’ve had a great demeanor really for all the games this year,” Barnes said.

Zeigler is the team’s third-leading scorer, their primary ball handler, and best distributor leading the team and SEC in assists per game averaging 5.4. He will definitely be a huge loss for the Volunteers with his play and leadership, as he nearly eclipsed a mark set by a Tennessee star from a year ago.

“I did, I went in halftime after I got through talking to the team and he’s such an unbelievable, wonderful person but he had been crying as you imagine because he was hurt,” Barnes said. “It’s tough, the tough thing Tom told me tonight, he tied Kennedy (Chandler) for the same amount of assists Kennedy had a year ago. But it’s just the way he’s grown as a point guard and a leader, but with that said we’re gonna continue.”

Lastly, both the SEC and NCAA Tournaments are right around the corner, and if Zeigler is not available for the Vols, Barnes broke down what their offensive attack could potentially look like moving forward.

“I thought Jahmai Mashack did a good job tonight handling the ball for us when he was in there, I mean we obviously won’t rely on one person to do it as much which is fine. We’ll get Tyreke (Key) back and we need him to get back and, we know what he’s capable of, but we’ll do it I guess by committee if that’s how you look at it , we’ve always kind of done that a little bit the last couple years,” Barnes said.