Cut To The Chase: No. 6 Tennessee 75, Vanderbilt 76

The Volunteers drop their second game of the season on the road in Nashville against the Commodores.

Jan 19, 2025

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No. 6 Tennessee dropped their second game of the season on Saturday night in Nashville against in-state rival Vanderbilt 76-75. To the Volunteers’ credit, the team never quit and battled all the way back late from a double-digit deficit on the road to come within one point of sending the ball game to overtime where anything could have happened.

Instead, the Vols came up just short in a game men’s head basketball coach Rick Barnes’ team likely had to win to keep their No. 1 seed dreams alive. The SEC is the best conference in the country this year and it’s not going to get any easier. Tennessee still has to travel to No. 1 Auburn, No. 8 Kentucky, No. 11 Texas A&M, & No. 21 Ole Miss along with home games against No. 15 Mississippi State and No. 4 Alabama. The margin of error to earn a No. 1 seed out of this conference is razor thin, and this is the kind of loss that requires you to have to squint awfully hard to see how the Vols earn their first No. 1 seed in the men’s NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history.

There is still a lot of basketball to be played to be sure, but three of the first five SEC opponents for the Vols have been unranked and Tennessee went 3-2.

Let’s dive into my three immediate takeaways from tonight’s loss to the Commodores.

We will never know how this game would have unfolded for the Vols had Zakai Zeigler not picked up that second foul with seven minutes and ten seconds remaining in the first half. We do know that Zeigler, who was not inserted back into the game for the remainder of the first half, would have the same amount of personal fouls with 40 seconds left in the second half– two. The Vols proceeded to make one field goal the rest of the first half, a Chaz Lanier three to pull Tennessee within four with one minute and twenty seconds left. In those seven minutes and ten seconds, Zeigler was not on the court, and the Vols surrendered their lead and went into the half down six points. Tennessee never led again after Barnes sat his best player due to his two personal fouls for the remainder of the first half. We will never know if the Vols would have kept their lead, or if the Vols would have built on their lead, if Barnes were to have let Zeigler play on with two fouls. What we do know, though, is at that moment the game changed and Tennessee lost an important game on the road in SEC play.
On the other side of the coin, you could very much argue that Tennessee was going to have a hard time pulling this game out of the hat, with Zeigler on the floor or not, with how the Vols’ defense fared in this ball game. The Commodores finished with 76 points, the most the Vols have surrendered to an opponent this year. Tennessee fouled often in this game, and it resulted in Vanderbilt going 12-of-14 from the free-throw line in the first half. Vandy doubled up Tennessee on second-chance points in the first half. They outscored the Tennessee in the paint 18-8 in the first half. Vanderbilt finished with more offensive rebounds, more fast-break points, and more bench points. Vanderbilt led for over 27 minutes of this ball game. The Commodores are a good team, and although they nearly gave the game away late to the Vols, they deserve a lot of credit for how they successfully attacked Barnes’ team all night long on the offensive end.
I was surprised to see Darlinstone Dubar not play a second in the second half of this game. In the middle of the first half, the Hofstra transfer missed a good look on a three at the top of the key that led to a Vanderbilt transition dunk on the other end. On the very next offensive possession, Zeigler found Dubar in the corner and he didn’t hesitate to let it fly and drilled it to put Tennessee up 26-21. That would be the last Vols’ field goal made for seven minutes. Tennessee attempted just seven threes in the second half, as opposed to the fourteen they took in the first. (Note: The Vols shot 50 percent from deep in the first half.) Dubar took two of those threes. We didn’t see him again in the second half. With how this game was going for the Vols defensively, this felt like a game where Dubar, Jordan Gainey and Igor Milicic Jr. were going to need to get up a lot of threes, especially in the second half, for the Vols to escape with a victory. As great as Jahmai Mashack is defensively for Tennessee, and he had two more steals for the Vols tonight, he was also a -10 in plus-minus in the game, the lowest on the team. This felt like a game where Tennessee had to lean on guys who were going to get shots up from deep, like Dubar or Gainey along with Zeigler and Lanier, with how much the Vols were struggling defensively. Seven three-point attempts in the second half is just too low for how this year’s Vols are built around their star point guard in Zeigler. Dubar not playing a minute in the second half is not as perplexing as Zeigler sitting the rest of the first half after getting hit with his second personal foul, but it was perplexing nonetheless.

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