Dalton Knecht has grabbed the headlines, but his presence on the floor has allowed the Tennessee men's basketball team to flex its other options.
That is the by-product of having one of the top players in college basketball on your roster and through 19 games of Knecht's one season with the Vols, there hasn't been many opposing defenses that have figured out how to stop him.
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Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark has had a front row seat to seeing teams try and defend Knecht, who has scored 25-plus points in five-straight games, including a 32-point outing in the Vols' 75-62 win over Vanderbilt last Saturday.
Before Knecht touched the floor in a game this season, Clark saw the difficulty he presented in the one-on-one battles at practice between him and one of the top perimeter defenders in the country in Jahmai Mashack.
“I see (Knecht) carve up Jahmai Mahack a lot of days and that’s not an easy thing to do. And (Mashack) obviously wins a lot of those battles," Clark said. "But he’s a tough cover. He’s one of those guys that, let’s say he’s in a ball screen, OK? If you go over the top and stay on his hip, he’s going to drive downhill and he’s going to give your big guy problems, which is a mismatch. OK. If you go under, he’s going to stop behind it and he’s probably going to shoot it.
"If you go over the top and you trail him and the big is just up enough and he drops back too far, he’ll just stop and shoot a pull up and he’s 6-foot-6 and a half. So he can go over the top of you and finish at the rim too."
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Knecht has been a mismatch for nearly every team so far.
For half, it seemed like Mississippi State had the remedy earlier this month in Starkville, building a double-digit lead while holding Knecht to just 2 points in the first 20 minutes. He scored 26 points in the second half and nearly brought the Vols back in a five-point loss.
Three days later, Georgia seemingly had Tennessee put away until Knecht took over the final six minutes and gave the Vols the lead for good in a 85-79 victory, highlighted by his 36 points.
He scored a career-high 39 points vs. Florida and 25 against Alabama, which felt like a relatively quiet afternoon.
But even when teams go all in on Knecht, it opens the rest of Tennessee's offense, which has plenty of proven capability in its veteran starters at all positions.
On the inside, forward Jonas Aidoo is playing the best basketball of his college career, averaging 11.9 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. On the perimeter, Zakai Zeigler, Josiah-Jordan James and Santiago Vescovi and Jordan Gainey off of the bench are scoring threats that teams can't afford to ignore.
“It’s huge. It is big for us (that Knecht can open up the offense)," Clark said. "Obviously, like national writers are excited about the numbers that Dalton’s putting up and I heard someone the other day say 'Dalton Knecht and the Tennessee Vols.' He would tell you that that’s probably not the case. We got a lot of guys that are really effective, really gifted offensive players...At the end of the year, Dalton is probably going be on the all league team. Jonas is probably gonna be on the all league team. That means that every one of our starters at some point in their career have been on the all league team in this league. So it’s not a fact of it’s just Dalton and all these other guys standing around. Like Jonas is playing at a really high level. Zakai Zeiger is playing like one of the best point guards in the league. Santi and Josiah are guys that have won a ton of games in this league over their career. Period. So we’ve got a lot of different weapons. The fact that we’ve had multiple guys that have had 20-point games this year, I think speaks to the firepower that we do have.
"I’m excited of the fact that (opponents) have to key in on him when he’s playing this well because all that does is give another opportunity to another guy to go against maybe a lesser matchup or a weaker defender. Because everybody’s going put their best wing defender on Dalton. Which means that your defender that’s maybe not as good is guarding Santi Vescovi, who’s just been two time First-Team All-SEC for the last two years. It presents some matchup issues. Which is great for us.”
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Luckily for Clark, he doesn't have to game plan for that.
He tries to think about how he'd approach it if he had to, but he still hasn't found the answer.
"It’s kind of one of those things that I put myself in a position a few times and as well as our coaching staff, it’s like, how would we prep for him?," Clark said. "And the only thing we could think of is to double him off of ball screens or send a double at him. But he’s big enough where he can see over the defense so he can make a kick to Jonas Aidoo— who’s playing like arguably the best big in the SEC and then he makes a play. It’s kind of one of those scenarios where, I don’t want to say lose-lose, but it’s not a lot that you can do.
"You just kind of got to execute a game plan, hope that it works, hope that he’s not making shots, hope that Jonas is not playing well out of the ball screens and the rest of our guys aren’t making shots. So it makes it really tough.”
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