Tennessee's adjustments didn't let DJ Burns, North Carolina State 'bully bullies'

DJ Burns knew what to expect from No. 12 Tennessee before North Carolina State left for San Antonio for Saturday night’s Hall of Fame Series game. He started his collegiate career with the Vols six years ago. He knows the program that Rick Barnes runs. 

“They’re a tough team,” Burns said earlier in the week. “They get wins.”

But that didn’t diminish his confidence before facing his old team.

“We bully bullies too, you know?” Burns said. “So it will be fun to see who gets bullied more.”

For stretches of the second half it was Burns, who transferred from Tennessee to Wofford and later to NC State, who was doing the bullying.

He scored 11 of his 15 points after halftime, including six straight to make it a one-possession game with 14:41 left. He scored to make it a one-point deficit with eight minutes left and hit two free throws at the 3:45 mark to get NC State back within two.

“We knew they were gonna really try to play through DJ Burns,” Barnes said on his postgame radio show on The Vol Network. “But we also felt like if we could get the tempo we wanted, that maybe he might struggle to end the game.”

NC State struggled to end the game after Barnes switched from junior center Jonas Aidoo to sophomore power forward Tobe Awaka. 

Aidoo, who missed practice Friday in Knoxville due to an illness, “wasn’t 100%” in the game, Barnes said, after he finished with four points and four rebounds in 26 minutes. 

“He did a good job,” Barnes said. “Late in the game, he’s getting kind of pushed around back in there.”

Awaka, on the other hand, played a season-high 18 minutes and grabbed a season-high 12 rebounds, including seven boards in the final seven minutes while matching up defensively against Burns. Awaka helped the Vols go from giving up an 11-point lead to building it back to 12 points after his hook shot in the paint with 37 seconds left. 

“I thought Tobe stepped in there tonight and did a good job,” Barnes said.

‘You’ve got to get it done with your defense’

Josiah-Jordan James and Zakai Zeigler hit the big shots. For James it was a go-ahead 3-pointer with 6:12 left, after NC State had erased Tennessee’s 11-point lead. He hit another with 1:41 left, making it a 75-67 lead for the Vols.

Zeigler had the dagger with 35 seconds earlier, hitting a three to give Tennessee a seven-point lead. 

James matched a career high with 23 points and set a new career high with five 3-pointers. Zeigler scored 20 points, his most productive outing since scoring 22 points against Texas last January. 

But it was Tennessee’s defense, as usual, that won the game for the Vols. 

NC State’s Casey Morsell made a layup with 5:02 left, cutting Tennessee’s lead to two at 65-63, but it was the last shot the Wolfpack would make from the floor until a desperation 3-pointer from Kam Woods with 24 seconds left.

“At the end of a game like that,” Barnes said, “you’ve got to get it done with your defense. And we did.”

During the stretch of four minutes, 38 seconds between NC State field goals, Tennessee expanded its lead from two to 12 with 37 seconds to go.

“We know that if we get a shot up and we don’t make it, we can get a stop on the other end,” Zeigler said. “Simple as that. That’s all we can know.”

“(Defense is) what we hang our hats on,” James added. “So we knew that knowing crunch time, that’s what we had to be able to sort of rely on. And I was proud of how we executed at the end.”

‘We’ve got to make layups’

Barnes had one critique for his team after Saturday night’s game. Tennessee can’t miss layups like the Vols did Saturday night in San Antonio.

Tennessee was 8-for-22 on layups according to game stats and was 1-for-2 on dunks. 

“The one thing we’ve got to do a better job of, we’ve got to make layups, the ones that are uncontested,” Barnes said. “They’re not as easy as you might think, but it’s the uncontested ones.”

The Vols have to take the layups they can get, too. Barnes after the game pointed out two drives from James and Zeigler that ended in kick-out passes to the 3-point line when they should’ve ended with layups. 

“I think those guys are so unselfish and they do trust each other,” Barnes said. “And they do believe we can shoot the ball. But when you get those point-blank layups like that, you’ve got to take advantage of it.”