Zakai Zeigler, Josiah-Jordan James offer their thoughts on Tennessee's small-ball lineup

Small-ball is one of the more effective tactics in this era of basketball. While it can sometimes give up an advantage inside, it provides several positives on both sides of the floor. Now, after Tennessee was forced to utilize the method against LSU due to the absence of Uros Plavsic, sophomore guard Zakai Zeigler was all for it.

Following the Volunteer’s 77-56 win over LSU on Saturday afternoon, Zeigler says the small-ball lineup gave them an advantage. It allowed them to maintain their defensive intensity against the Tigers while also giving them a much-needed boost offensively.

“I like it a lot because a lot of teams struggle to guard us in it. And it’s hard for them to find matches with us because, primarily, everybody that’s out there when we play small-ball are really good defenders,” said Zeigler. “There’s no letup on the defensive end. But it’s really on the offensive end where that boosts us up.”

“We give teams a lot more than they can handle with that small-ball lineup,” Zeigler said.

Senior Josiah-Jordan James agreed with those sentiments postgame as well. He had a different viewpoint considering he was one of the tallest players in the lineup but, still, James thought it worked wonders for their offense, which is why they put so much time into working on it heading into the game.

“There’s a lot of ball movement, a lot of player movement. I feel like we can space the floor, there’s a lot of room to drive, we can shoot the ball at a high level,” said James. “I felt like, the last two days, we really locked in and honed in on that. That’s why we were able to execute so well.”

With Plavsic out due to illness, the tallest player in Tennessee’s starting five was the 6’9 Olivier Nkhamoua. They also didn’t utilize Jonas Aidoo or Tobe Awaka very much off of their bench during the contest.

Still, the Volunteers were as well-oiled as ever in Baton Rouge. On offense, they hung 77 points while shooting 44.6% from the field and 37.5% from deep. On defense, they held LSU to just 56 points and forced 19 turnovers while also outrebounding them by five.

Plavsic, Aidoo, and Awaka are all still very important pieces to the Tennessee roster. Even so, with how effective their rotation of guards and forwards is, this might be something we see the Volunteers employ more over the last few weeks of the regular season.