Jahmai Mashack called his shot before shutting down Alabama's Brandon Miller

Jahmai Mashack called his shot during a conversation with Jonas Aidoo in the days leading up to No. 10 Tennessee’s game against No. 1 Alabama. He would be tasked with guarding freshman phenom Brandon Miller and he wasn’t shying away from the challenge.

“I was talking to Jahmai two days before the game,” Aidoo, Tennessee’s sophomore center, said Wednesday night, “and he was super locked in. He was talking about, ‘He’s not going to get nothing.’”

When Mashack was on the floor, Miller got next to nothing. With Mashack defending, Miller scored four points, all from the foul line, in 27 minutes while going 0-for-6 from the floor. Miller had scored 13 points on 4-for-5 shooting in 13 minutes when Mashack was on the bench.

“He didn’t even score and he had the highest plus-minus on the team,” Aidoo continued. “I feel like he did a phenomenal job on Brandon Miller. For the rest of the team, we just knew that if he got clipped on any ball screens, we had to help him. Run (Miller) off the 3-point line and just force him to take bad shots.”

Nate Oats: Jahmai Mashack ‘made Brandon (Miller’s) night a lot harder’

Miller, even on a slow night, still led Alabama with 15 points and 10 rebounds. But Tennessee won 68-59 thanks to a suffocating defensive effort, holding the Crimson Tide to their lowest point total of the season and forcing 19 turnovers. 

“He was physical with Brandon,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said. “He made Brandon’s night a lot harder … they talk about Mashack being a stopper. He played 27 minutes and didn’t score a point. He obviously in there for his impact on the defensive end. He obviously did a great job tonight.”

Head coach Rick Barnes had his own conversation with Mashack in recent days. After the loss to Missouri on Saturday, Barnes told him to get ready for more minutes and for a bigger opportunity.

“I said, ‘From this point on, you’re not taking a backseat to anybody,’” Barnes said. “I said, ‘You’re out there competing and I expect you to go out there and play like these other guys. You don’t have to play perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but you’ve got to continue to bring what you bring everyday because this team needs it’ and he was even better today than he was Saturday.”

The challenge is nothing new to Mashack, though. Guarding the other team’s best player is what he’s been talking about, and wanting to do, all season. 

“At this point,” Mashack said in January, “I think they (the coaches) know I want whoever the go to player is. It doesn’t matter if they are the one, two, three, or the four, I really want to guard them. That’s my mindset. 

“I feel like I can go against anybody and defend the best players. That’s what I hang my hat on. I think they know at this point that I want the challenge.”

Up Next: No. 10 Tennessee at Kentucky, Saturday, 1 p.m. ET, CBS

Mashack was a four-star prospect in the 2021 recruiting cycle out of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. He was recruited to Tennessee by former assistant head coach and defensive specialist Mike Schwartz, who is currently in his first year as head coach at East Carolina.

What Mashack did Wednesday night against Miller, sophomore point guard Zakai Zeigler said, is what his Tennessee teammates see him do day in and day out.

“Whether that’s in practice,” Zeigler said, “he and I talking smack to each other, he gives everybody their best shot like they’re the best player in the country. And Brandon Miller, he is a pretty good player but when Jahmai is locked in it’s hard for anybody to score on him.”

That’s why he was on the floor for 27 minutes against Alabama despite not scoring a point — he was 0-for-4 from the floor, adding three rebounds, two assists and three steals — and it’s why he’ll be staying on the floor moving forward.

“We keep telling our guys that they have to find a way to impact the game without scoring a point,” Barnes said, “because everybody wants to score, they do. The more he is out there, the more he’s going to figure that side of it out. 

“But the intangibles that he brings, you gotta have it on the court. You gotta have it. He will solidly be in the lineup because of what he does.”