Fourth-ranked Tennessee trailed by double-digits early in the second half before using a shooting barrage to beat No. 15 Missouri, 85-81 on Wednesday.

After missing the Vols' 20-point triumph of Florida four days earlier, Zakai Zeigler and Igor Milicic Jr. looked back to full health, leading the team with 21 points each and headlining Tennessee's surge.

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The Vols (19-4, 6-4 SEC) shot 50% from the field and 66.7% from three-point range in their best offensive performance in league play, while out-scoring the Tigers (16-7, 6-3) in the paint, 34-18.

Here is everything Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said about the performance.

"A lot of respect for Missouri. Dennis (Gates) has done a great job with his team. From the year they had (in 2023-24), the way he’s changed just the entire mindset, coming back from when he was there his first year. Really a phenomenal job by him, getting his team ready to play. And they’re always tough to play against. And he does a great job. He believes in the system, what he’s doing. But I was really disappointed in the first half, because of the things that we talked about, we didn’t take advantage of it. Honestly, at halftime, I didn’t even think we were looking to take advantage of what we wanted to get out of it.

“Second half, I was really proud of the fact that we executed better, took shots, got better shots. And (we) can’t start the game with (missing) those shots around the rim. They’re tough. And missing free throws early. But again, like always, I thought our defense kept us close enough and we got down and we had a little spurt there to get back in it. But as well as I thought we played in the second half, again, give them credit for what happened in the first half, but we did not play well at all.”

"Offensively, you get guys that are, people are afraid to leave shooters. And we get guys in position where, again, they switch or hoping to be able to take advantage of those switching situations and create some of those match ups and then play out of that. But they’re concerned about shooters. But the first half we did exactly what we talked about. We would make one cut and stop playing. You need to move them because they do a great job of switching out, taking your cuts away. And we talked about back cut after back cut, and guys were just making a straight cut that we didn’t even want and didn’t even try to look to slip to the open area. But we did, again, a better job in the second half.”

“We just went to a set where it started with Jordan. He has a way. People want to down and people want to keep him off cuts. They can’t in that set. He has got two ways he can go. It goes back to the question about what makes that effective, they are afraid to leave either Jordan (Gainey) or afraid to leave Chaz (Lanier) in those situations. Now, it is hard for them to down it. If they are not going to switch the five, more times than not, you will play off that. If you are going to make the cut to the top, you can get a slip and hope to create a mismatch there. We had a chance to finish it a couple times. We could have driven it, but we didn’t because we didn’t create the double gap and wedge like we want to. I thought (Zeigler) putting it on the money, they got separation, got turned around and got ready to shoot it. That gives us a chance to go rebound it, too, especially from the backside.”

“I thought (Milicic) was good. I thought he got tired at the end. And again, we had a couple defensive breakdowns that we can’t have in that situation. When they’re down, they’re going have to drive the ball. You know who the 3-point shooters are. You can’t foul. We were in our switching defense, one through five, and they ran a little pistol action. And I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was tired, because we can’t foul right there, you know? And that’s why again, we got to get consistency from everybody. And it can’t be on one night, off one night. But I really thought he and (Zakai Zeigler) both came back, I thought (Zeigler) was terrific. I did. I thought he was really terrific tonight and not really practicing but one day, and not even a full day with that. But Igor handles the ball, and I thought he made some really good decisions. Didn’t settle for a three when he could have taken a couple of them. And went, made a couple good plays for (Zeigler) to give (Zeigler) a great look at it. And that’s when (Zeigler) is at his best, a after a middle drive and he gets spotted up. That’s when he shoots the ball his (at) best number.”

“It was really disappointing because of what we talked about. They, again, they played the way they play. They’re going to see if you can handle it. And we just didn’t do at all what we talked about. I put in the first four minutes of the second half and showed them everything we talked about that was there, but we didn’t take advantage of it. And I wasn’t real happy at half time because just that and we came out the second half and I thought played harder, played with more energy and we worked harder on offense to try to get shots.”

"I thought (Zeigler) controlled the game for us and, again, he really did a lot of good things. And again, his minutes, how many did he play tonight? 34. Again, probably like to get that down a little bit more, but we can’t do it unless we know what we’re going to get off the bench every time because we can mix and match different lineups. I mean, but it goes back again, consistency. And we are deep into this season now. We should be able by now to know exactly what we’re going to get every single night. And it can’t be on one night off one night, it can’t be, you play well in practice. You don’t show up for the game. It’s a matter of competing at the highest level and just simply doing your job and what we talk about. But I don’t want to take anything away from Missouri because again, Dennis has done as good a job as anybody in the country. He and his staff and his guys are poised, you don’t care what the score is in the game. They’re going to continue to fight and they’re going to drag it out as long as they can, as they’ve shown tonight. We need to finish better at the free throw line with the right guys up there.

"But really, that’s a really good win because I thought it was a high level game. Both teams battled each other, fought each other, and again, obviously the reason we weren’t good in the first half, you got to give them credit for it. They’re trying to do something, they’re trying to mess us up. But they definitely messed us up in first half because we were not good.”

“More speed, playing absolutely with a purpose. Playing each other, knowing each other’s game. And obviously we got some stops. You got to get stops to get back in it. We got out, we ran, had some good looks at it, we knocked them down, got an offensive rebound in there but it’s speed. We need to get out in the transition, we need to move the ball, get it going. And we still don’t do that as well as we should. We need those kind of baskets to transition. To get some of those looks.”

“I just said it at halftime. We got to know by now what we’re going to get. It goes back to understanding what we’re looking for. What we were looking for early was there, we didn’t read it, we didn’t make the right passes and (when) we did, the ball was thrown too soft, didn’t get there. The ball’s gotta be passed. We had a chance tonight to hit two wide open threes and we threw just absolutely horrendous passes down by the knee and stuff like that that took us out of shooting position. But I don’t know if they were concerned about them because they do a good job trying to deflect and get out and run. But we’ve gotta become a better passing team in those situations. We got to be in rotation and all we had to do was deliver the ball the right way, and we had the right guy ready to shoot the ball, but we didn’t deliver the pass.”

“We’ve had games where we look like a great basketball team scoring the ball. When the ball is going in, it all looks good. I mean, if I could coach making shots, I would do this till I’m 110. If I can live that long. I mean when that ball’s going in, it looks good. And there’s some nights it goes in and you’re not even playing good, but it goes in. I mean, I think they banked a couple in from out top, but I’ve seen (Caleb) Grill do that. You know, he’s done it, he’s got deep range and again, we foul another three-point shooter, which we can’t do.

“But what I wanna see us do is make some of those shots around the rim. Those are the ones we need to make. When you start doing that, they got to loosen up. And we finally got a couple back-cuts, things that we talked about. I mean, they’re just out there denying, you’ve gotta play basketball. There’s games where you can maybe run some offensive plays, and there’s other games where you simply have to play basketball, and we showed ’em what we wanted. We didn’t execute in the first half. Again, Missouri had a lot to do with that. The second half we were better, but we made shots too.”

“I don’t know if you ever know, but you know what, I think if you asked any coach if you could have one trait in a player, a lot of coaches might come up with something. Mine would probably be a high motor. Play with a high-level motor night in and night out. Or you could say that’s a competitive spirit. You can break it down any way you want to do it. High motor means you’re out there trying to win every possession. Competitive spirit means you’re trying to fight for every possession and it’s hard. It’s really, really hard to play the game that way. Very few guys can do it and it’s a daily commitment to it where you’ve gotta get yourself in just incredible cardio conditioning, toughness. And at the end of the game, that’s when those guys truly believe in the last four minutes you can break it loose by running the court, getting a layup, getting on the offensive glass. Doing something where your motor or your competitive spirit makes a game-breaking play for you.”

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