Tennessee couldn't get past South Carolina at home after a poor night of shooting.
The Vols shot 36.2% from the field, 23.8% on 3-pointers and 60% from the free throw line in the loss.
Here is what Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said on what went wrong on the offensive end.
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On Zakai Zeigler struggling
"Well, I thought he got out of rhythm in terms of what he normally gives us. He started pressing and kind of losing his overall discipline in terms of what we need him to do on both offense and defense. One time, on the defensive end and he went off for a steal where nobody knew what was going on. They ended up getting a three out of it. It wasn’t Zakai (Zeigler). It wasn't Zakai. You can’t miss 10 point-blank layups and do what we did on the free throw line and expect to win. Lamont (Paris) has done a great job and I don’t want to take anything away from the fact that they came in and have done what they have done all year. They have been steady and execute and do what they need to do to win games and we didn't. We didn’t deserve to win this game. We had some good looks at it then all at once you start missing those shots. They start looking around, okay Dalton (Knecht), we need you to step up here and do something and waiting on him to make every play. It is not fair to do that to him. If you make those layups at the rate that we should have been, then adjustments take place in the game, but we didn’t. Two games in a row we have done a really poor job on the free throw line. Early in the game, every one of our key guys that we have counted on, our No. 1 emphasis was rebounding. Every one of those guys gave up one offensive rebound. Give South Carolina credit. We told them they are a really good rebounding team and they went and got it done. We started switching in the first half on sets that we have never done it. I said to the coaches, what are we doing? We talked about it. They didn’t throw anything at us that the coaches hadn’t talked about in the scouting. We just lost our discipline all around early on pretty much on both ends of the court."
On others helping out Dalton Knecht
“Well, I think we know what to do is get him the ball. You know that he’s proven he can go. I mean, look at his numbers. You say he wasn’t making shots, he shot almost 50%. I mean, volume shooter, I mean, and he’s not a volume shooter, but we need you look down the line. I mean, I can talk about guys miss shots, but you can’t miss layups. I’m just telling you, you can’t. The game is too hard, when you've got a chance to dunk the ball or finish, and we can’t. I mean, Dalton hasn’t done a good job on the free throw line in the last two games and every time we had a chance to maybe crawl back in it. I think Zakai was 2-for-4. What was Jonas (Aidoo) from the free-throw line (2-for-4)? Dalton (6-for-10)? I mean, those are three guys you want there. Again, we didn’t do a good job on the free throw line.”
On what went wrong for Jonas Aidoo on offense
"I can't answer that. I wish I could. I really wish I could."
On layups being a lack of focus
“You know what, that’s what I told our guys. I didn’t particularly like our focus overall at (Vanderbilt) in terms of the way we came out after that week off. And, again, I don’t think we’re not playing hard, but I do think it’s focus to details, discipline and we got an older group of guys that shouldn’t happen. I mean, first four minutes of the game pretty much set the tone for what was going to happen because you start missing those layups and those shots like that and it just puts, you’re like ‘uh oh, here we go.’ And we’ve seen it happen before and it’s tough.”
On going to a small-ball lineup
"Well, we think Jahmai (Mashack) can guard anybody. They scored some buckets out of it, but we thought that, that he could go do that. And honestly, Jonas was struggling. Our post guys were struggling. I mean, point blank, they were struggling. So we’ve used that line up and, you know, I don’t want to sit around and hope somebody’s going to play well. You know, you look at the minutes and you see guys that have played 30 minutes on down and they’re not give it to you, how long do you wait? Does he have it or not? And we've got enough guys on his team that have earned a right to have a shot at it and see if they can do something."
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