Tennessee Basketball: Vols bounce back against Florida Gulf Coast
Tennessee missed five of its first six shots Wednesday night against Thompson-Boling Arena. For the first few minutes against visiting Florida Gulf Coast, it looked like the disastrous shooting percentage that plagued the Vols in the loss to Colorado on Sunday in Nashville had followed them back home to Knoxville.
Then Santiago Vescovi hit a 3-pointer. Then the senior shooting guard hit another. Over the course of back-to-back possessions, he made as many shots as he made the entire game against Colorado.
That’s when Tennessee got back to business, taking the game over with 14-0 run in the first half and putting the defensive clamps on FGCU on the way to an 81-50 win.
Olivier Nkamhoua scored 18 points and Josiah-Jordan James added 18 more to lead Tennessee (2-1). Julian Phillips had 11 points, five rebounds and two assists while Vescovi had eight points, six rebounds and three assists. Zakai Zeigler scored six points and had six rebounds off the bench and Jahmai Mashack provided a spark in the second half, finishing with a career-high 10 points on 4-for-6 shooting.
Florida Gulf Coast (2-2) got 11 points from Zach Anderson.
Tennessee held FGCU to just 14 made shots on the night while the Vols scored 20 points off of 17 turnovers. The Eagles shot 30.4 percent from the field and just 20.8 percent from the 3-point line.
The work was done by halftime.
FGCU made just two shots from the field over the final 12:50 of the first half. The Eagles were scoreless for nearly five minutes while Tennessee went on its 14-0 run, turning a game tied at 9-9 to a 23-9 lead for the Vols.
James, coming off his 15 points on 5-for-11 shooting against Colorado, scored 12 points in the first half, to go with six rebounds and a pair of assists.
Vescovi, who went 2-for-13 from the field on Sunday, was 3-for-4 in the first half Wednesday, including 2-for-3 at the 3-point line. Nkamhoua scored nine points in the first half, after finishing with just four against Colorado, going 1-for-8 from the floor.
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Lineup Changes, Injury Note
Head coach Rick Barnes mixed up the starting lineup, moving Key into the starting point guard role in place of Zeigler, who lost the job after committing two turnovers in the opening two minutes on Sunday.
James, who missed the preseason while continuing to comeback from offseason knee surgery, moved into the starting lineup after 7-foot-1 senior center Uros Plavsic missed the game with a right ankle injury.
Plavsic turned the ankle in the first half against Colorado, leaving the game and not returning. He walked off the floor under his own power but with a heavy limp. Plavsic was in street clothes on the bench Wednesday but did not have a boot on the injured ankle.
What’s Next: Battle 4 Atlantis
Tennessee is off until Wednesday, when the Battle 4 Atlantis opens in the Bahamas with a game against Butler. It’s scheduled to start around 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on ESPN and is the first of three games in three days.
The Tennessee-Butler winner and loser will matchup on Thursday with the winner and loser from Wednesday’s Southern Cal-BYU game.
The eight-team field also includes Kansas, North Carolina State, Dayton and Wisconsin. The Vols beat Purdue to open the tournament in 2017, lost to Villanova then beat North Carolina State.
