Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark talks Vols, previews Vanderbilt game

Everything Tennessee basketball assistant coach Rod Clark said before practice on Monday, ahead of the Vols hosting Vanderbilt on Tuesday in a 9 p.m. Eastern Time start (TV: SEC Network) at Thompson-Boling Arena:

How Tennessee’s offensive efficiency has happened the last two games

“I think it’s just guys starting to understand what we’re trying to do offensively. Getting more comfortable, seeing the ball go in a lot more early. Just kind of getting into a rhythm. I think the goal is every year to start getting into a rhythm when league play comes around, you want to start playing your best basketball. I just think that everything is going our way right now as far as the offensive end because we put time in and we’re just getting better.”

Tennessee getting better playing inside out in the offense

“Yeah, I think naturally. That is kind of something that Coach Barnes has been preaching to our guys. We’ve been wanting to establish ourselves inside with our big guys. And that has helped us get more shots on the perimeter, versus early in the year we had some games where, early in the game, we kind of took some open threes, which weren’t terrible shots, but establishing ourself in the post is always a better thing for us offensively.”

What has made Olivier Nkamhoua so effective offensively in recent games

“You know, ‘O’ is just getting more and more comfortable. I think a lot of times we kind of don’t understand how long it takes to get back into a rhythm, consistently playing basketball. You know, this time a year ago, Olivier was playing and a month later he wasn’t. So all summer it was building that momentum back up and getting the repetition and getting back comfortable playing the game of basketball. Now he’s settling in and he’s starting to look how he looked when he got hurt last year. He was kind of at that pace where he was playing really good basketball at a really high level. Then he got hurt and it was tough to see. Now, I think he’s officially gotten back and gotten his rhythm back. He’s playing the best basketball I’ve ever seen from him and you know I saw him in high school, I coached against him one time. He’s a completely different player than that time.”

Zakai Zeigler ‘a maestro’ for Vols at point guard

How much of the offensive success recently is from Zakai Zeigler running point guard

“You know, actually, that’s been a big thing that we’ve been focusing on, that I personally have been trying to focus on with him. Yesterday I asked him how does it feel to really be a point guard now. Like, how does it feel to really learn how to run a team? And he just started smiling. And I said, ‘What feels better to you? Throwing a behind-the-back pass to somebody to dunk, or making a deep three?’ And he cut me off. He was like, ‘Making that behind the back pass, getting other guys shots.’ That’s starting to be something that feels great to him because he feels like he’s creating for us. You look at it, the last two games, he ha 18 assists. He looks like a maestro, man. I think his growth is what is allowing our guys to get even better as well.”

How Uros Plavsic has handled the emergence of Jonas Aidoo and Tobe Awaka in the post, the Tennessee coaches’ expectations for Plavsic from game to game

“We expect Uros to be Uros, man. We expect him to pay really hard. We expect for him to rebound the basketball at a high level. We expect for him to be a facilitator. We expect for him to just play his role at the highest level. Because that was something that got him starting minutes last year and got him in the starting lineup. Early in the year he had kind of got away from it a little bit. I think he was going through a little bit of an identity crisis. Because all of the guys, yeah, they’re big dudes, but they’re kids. They all want to find their worth when it comes to a high level team. He’s been trying to find himself when it comes to that, but I would say lately he’s been embracing it and he has helped Tobe, he’s helped Jonas. He’s helped ‘O’. In practice, those guys have battles, man. Like real battles every day. They all have gotten better gradually through each game. I think he has handled it the way any veteran on a high-caliber team should, honestly.”

How much the return of Josiah-Jordan James changes the lineup possibilities for this team

“Josiah being back is like, I don’t like to compare him to this, but it’s almost like Kobe back in the Staples Center after a long injury. His energy, his enthusiasm, his infectious personality, it just lifts everybody. Jahmai Mashack said it last year, after we were going through a rut. We had lost at LSU and Jo was having a bad game. His head was down, he was just in a bad state. He was shooting, I think, like 19 percent from the field at the time. And Jahmai was like ‘Jo, when your head is down, and when you’re not talking in timeouts, it affects us. Like we don’t feel like we can beat anybody when you’re like that. But when you have great energy and you’re coaching guys up and you’re being a leader, we feel like we’re the best team in the country.’ Ever since then, I think Jo has embraced how infectious his status is for our guys. Him being our leader is important. So with him being back, I don’t want anybody to make a mistake not thinking that him being back doesn’t have anything to do with our offensive success. Because it does. He’s just another fix-it guy for us and he fixes everything — offensive end or defensive end. He’s great at it.”

A freshman Jahmai Mashack telling Josiah-Jordan James last season that they needed his energy

“Jahmai has always been a guy that’s kind of been a younger leader for us. That’s why we’re excited for him to take on that role as one of our established leaders next year. He’s kind of already taken it on this year. I think he’s No. 3 in the country in steal percentage. Every time he gets into the game it’s like a venus fly trap. He just steals passes, he creates havoc defensively. When you think about when we go into games and we have feature scorers, you think about who’s going to guard him. We have two guys that come off the bench that can literally be take out guys for anybody we need to guard. Then we have three-four guys in our starting lineup that are like that as well. It’s a great luxury to have, and him as a young guy being a catalyst for us defensively, I think it’s huge.”

Shutting down opponent’s leading scorer

“They’re extremely competitive. I say all the time, I have so much fun coaching these guys. We have so much fun because it’s rare when you have a group of kids that are this competitive and take on challenges the way that they do. It was a big focus talking about GG and we went ahead and threw it out there that he had scored in double figures in every game this season and I was being literal but not as literal as like hey, let’s not let him score tonight. Every coach says that. Don’t let him score. He gets nothing but you don’t expect to look at the box score and like wow he had zero points. For a guy that’s potentially going to be a lottery pick. I mean GG Jackson is a really good player, but for our guys to step up and take that challenge I think it speaks volumes to really the competitive spirit and championship mindset we have in the locker room.”

Up Next: Tennessee vs. Vanderbilt, Tuesday, 9 p.m. ET, SEC Network

Tennessee having multiple players that can guard multiple positions

“It’s unreal. It makes us literally a historic defensive team. Like I said, I don’t see a ton of teams that have as many guys that are that high level and that dominant defensively. You go from Zakai Zeigler who’s a guy that can pick up 90 feet, turn you three times before you get to halfcourt. You’ve got Santi Vescovi who is one of the most competitive guys I’ve ever been around. You have Josiah James who’s one of the most versatile defenders you’ve ever seen, to me the best defender in the country one-to-five. Julian Phillips for a freshman is a high level defender. High, high level defender. Jahmai Mashack, it goes without saying. Olivier, Jonas Aidoo. I could throw out every guy on our roster and it’s like I just get overwhelmed even talking about it. There’s so many high level defenders. It’s a great luxury to have for us.”

What stands out about Vanderbilt

“They lost Scotty Pippen (Jr.) and I told coach that I felt like if Scotty came back, I felt like they were going to be one of the best teams in the league because last year they were playing their best basketball at the end. We watched them when they really challenged Kentucky at the SEC Tournament and played at a high level. This year, they still play at a super high level. Guys ask me before the season started who I felt like was the most underrated coach in the league and I said Jerry Stackhouse. I think he’s an unbelievable coach. They run good stuff. His teams are tough, they’re competitive, they make shots and since I’ve been here at least, the team that puts us in the biggest trick bag defensively is Vanderbilt. Every year. They get the most wide open shots against us than anybody in the league and it’s partly because of how good of a coach he is.”

If there’s any concern about Tennessee players overlooking Vanderbilt to Saturday’s matchup with Kentucky

“Concerned with it, no. It’s up to us to kind of make sure the guys are locked in on what we need to do. At the end of the day, this is a one game at a time process because we want to win a championship. We want to win a league championship. We have a checklist after every game that we show guys that has every opponent and we put a green check and we highlight the next opponent and every other opponent is shaded out. We have to understand that there is no overlooking anybody when it comes to trying to win a championship because the moment you do that the moment you lose an opportunity. That’s just the bottom line. Keeping our guys locked in on that and luckily we have a mature group that understands we have two games at home this week. That is a lovely scenario in the SEC and we have to take care of business in each one. But, first thing first, we have to come in here and handle Vanderbilt.”