Rick Barnes updates the status of Tennessee point guard Zakai Zeigler's return from torn ACL
Rick Barnes wouldn’t say on Monday if he thinks point guard Zakai Zeigler will be back on the floor by the time Tennessee basketball starts its season on November 6. All the head coach was willing to say is he “wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I don’t know if I should say one way or the other,” Barnes said Monday at his golf tournament at Holston Hills Country Club, which raises funds for the Emerald Youth Foundation. “But knowing him, I wouldn’t be surprised. But again, I’m going to leave that up to our doctors and Chad (Newman) and Garrett (Medenwald).
“He has been a perfect model for how you go about rehabilitation terms of the way he’s rehabbed his knee and the way he’s gone at it. Still, I’ll rely on them. But I see him every day and he tells me, he said I’m good, I’m ready to go. But I know that even if he wasn’t, he’d say that.”
Rick Barnes: Zakai Zeigler won’t come back ‘as quickly as he probably wants to, but he is doing great’
Zeigler suffered the torn ACL early in a game against Arkansas on February 28 at Thompson-Boling Arena, after driving baseline and crumpling with the non-contact injury. He had surgery in mid March and, ever since then, the feedback about his rehab has been that it’s moving in the right direction.
“(He’s) doing great and he’s excited, ready to go,” Barnes said, “but we’ll continue to monitor that and bring him back, as you know, not as quickly as he probably wants to, but he is doing great.”
Back in March, when Tennessee was at Madison Square Garden in New York for the Sweet Sixteen, Zeigler set “August or September” as his own timetable for return.
“That’s my personal goal,” Zeigler said at the time. “I just want to push toward that. Not so much being able to be fully active, but to be able to move around and just try to get on the court somewhat.”
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“I plan on being back next season,” Zeigler added, “before we start.”
Barnes said on Monday there’s no specific timeline set for Zeigler.
“Not really,” Barnes said. “I think the biggest fear that we all would have is that he comes back too soon and it would linger throughout the season. That’s the one thing we want to avoid. We want him to be able to be who he is and because he only knows one way to go and that’s full speed, full throttle.”
Zakai Zeigler last season: 10.7 points, 5.3 assists, 4.6 rebounds, 1.9 steals
Tennessee plays a charity exhibition game at Michigan State on October 29 and opens its home schedule with an exhibition against Lenoir-Rhyne on October 31. The Vols open the season at home against Tennessee Tech on November 6 and go to Wisconsin on November 10.
The November tests continue with Syracuse on November 20, the first of three games in three days in a loaded Maui Invitational Field, and a trip to North Carolina on November 29 for the first edition of the ACC-SEC Challenge.
Zeigler has been back on the floor with his teammates during summer workouts, but the Vols are still being overly cautious with the return.
“He’s done a little bit with us,” Barnes said. “We just want make sure that he’s (ready). We won’t ever put him out there unless he’s 100% healthy, but we just want to make sure that we do anything. We’re going to err on being a little bit cautious.”
