'They just wanted it more': How FAU beat Tennessee to the spot in the Sweet 16

NEW YORK — Uros Plavsic sat in his locker at Madison Square Garden late Thursday night searching for the words to explain it, moments and plays still running through his mind. How was a smaller Florida Atlantic team able out-rebound a bigger, more physical Tennessee team? How did the pesky Owls keep getting open shots, second-chance looks and put together the run that sent the Vols home?

“It hurts, man,” Plavsic said. “I mean, I don’t know. I’m still here just trying to process it.”

Florida Atlantic, the No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament’s East Region, used a 16-2 run in the second half to take control in the Sweet 16, getting one extra rebound after the other and making one extra pass after the next, to end No. 4-seed Tennessee’s season, 62-55.

The lights went out on the Vols after a second half in which they looked like anything but themselves on the defensive end of the floor. 

“Just make smarter plays in the second half,” Plavsic said of what his team needed to do, but couldn’t. “Better defense, rebound the ball better, at a higher level. I think we were not ourselves defensively tonight, especially in the second half.”

FAU outscored Tennessee 40-28 after halftime, after the Vols led by six at the break and by as many as nine in the first half. The Owls won the rebounding battle 40-36 and scored 14 second-chance points. 

After going 3-for-14 from the 3-point line in the first half, FAU was 5-for-13 in the second half, piling up daggers during the game-changing run.

“They were just driving by us and kicking the ball out,” Plavsic said. “Just kept making wide-open shots, basically. They put us in rotations a lot of times during the game and we were not able to find that open man out of that scramble. I really feel like that was it.”

Olivier Nkamhoua: ‘The offensive rebounds they had, they killed us’

Tennessee, with the top-ranked defense in college basketball this season, couldn’t get a stop. When the Vols did, they couldn’t get a rebound to end the possession.

Florida Atlantic’s 16-2 run turned Tennessee’s 39-33 lead with 12:51 left to a 49-41 deficit with 7:22 to go. FAU stretched its lead to 10, its biggest of the night, with 6:47 left.

The possession started with a Brandon Weatherspoon miss, but Vladislav Goldin grabbed a one-handed offensive rebound. After that, Michael Forrest missed a 3-point jumper, but Weatherspon again grabbed the rebound and scored at the rim to put his team up 51-41.

“They were getting those offensive rebounds and we weren’t able to stop them,” senior forward Olivier Nkamhoua said. “They were getting shots at the rim. We were able to get a stop then they’d get the ball back. That’s tough when you work so hard on defense to get a stop, then they get the ball back and get another shot at it.

“That’s tough to just keep getting those back-to-back stops without getting a chance to go back on the offensive end. The offensive rebounds they had, they killed us.”

FAU’s style of play killed Tennessee, too. The Owls and their guard-heavy lineup lived at the perimeter and crashed the glass with a running start. 

“It’s tough,” sophomore guard Jahmai Mashack said. “They had four guards, they were fast. When they’re at the 3-point line, it’s hard to box out guys that are just running downhill to the boards.

“They got a full head of steam, it’s hard to stop guys like that, legally, with boxing out. It’s tough. We just had to do a better job of locating it, staying with it. I don’t think we did that.”

FAU shot 46.2 percent from the field in the second half, 38.5 percent from the 3-point line and went 11-for-14 at the foul line. 

“They got open,” senior wing Josiah-Jordan James said. “We got put in too many rotations. And they got offensive rebounds at bad times for us. We just had too many defensive breakdowns.”

Josiah-Jordan James: ‘Rebounding is really just will’

Tennessee had to do a better job on the offensive end, too, with a suddenly vulnerable defense. But the points never materialized. The Vols shot 33.3 percent from the field for the game, went 6-for-23 from three and 7 of 12 at the stripe.

After scoring 27 points in the win over Duke Saturday to advance out of the second round in Orlando, Nkamhoua had just six points, going 2-for-9 from the field. He didn’t hit his first shot Thursday until there was 5:23 left in the second half.

James scored 10 points, but seven came in the game’s first eight minutes. FAU chased Santiago Vescovi off the perimeter, with the senior guard finishing with nine points on 3-for-9 shooting from the 3-point line.

Tyreke Key had five points on 2-for-9 shooting. Julian Phillips was scoreless, taking only two shots from the field in his 12 minutes, and Plavsic scored all eight of his points in the first half. 

Like Plavsic, James sat in the Tennessee locker room after the game trying to find the answer to what had just happened for 40 minutes on the floor. All he could come up with was effort.

“Rebounding is really just will,” James said. 

Florida Atlantic enforced theirs with the season on the line.

“They just wanted it more,” James said. “It’s hard to say.”