When it mattered most, Vols leaned on veterans in win at Alabama

The fifth-year Tennessee guard had been in plenty of situations like the one he and his Vols teammates were in late Saturday night inside Coleman Coliseum.

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Tennessee was standing on the biggest stage it had been on to this point in the season, with its superstar player looking more human than he has looked in the last two months and the SEC regular season title hanging in the balance.

As Alabama teetered on turning its lead into an insurmountable deficit for the Vols near the midway point of the second half, the usual cast of heroes stepped up at the right time—again.

James nabbed 13 rebounds. Fellow fifth-year guard Santiago Vescovi came away with timely steals that threw off the rhythm of the Crimson Tide's nation-leading offense. Zakai Zeigler knocked down 3-pointers in critical moments. So did Jahmai Mashack, whose go-ahead three put Tennessee in front for good with six minutes left. Jonas Aidoo made his presence felt in the paint.

The result was a 81-74 come-from-behind victory that lived up to the hype and put Tennessee (23-6, 13-4 SEC) in sole possession of first place in the league standings with two games left.

That group has been in these kinds of games before, but they may have never felt more confident in them than they do now.

"I tell the guys all the time, we can weather any storm," James said. "Never get too high, never get too low. Just proud of the resiliency we showed."

This Tennessee team has proven that. It had to late against Georgia, Vanderbilt and Missouri over the last month. Just three nights before they played Alabama, the Vols needed a late surge to beat Auburn in Knoxville.

What made this performance different was Tennessee being able to do it without Dalton Knecht being at the center of it.

The front-runner for SEC Player of the Year, who scored 39 points in that win over Auburn on Wednesday, wasn't getting shots to fall against Alabama and his 13 points felt tame in the comparison to the 20-plus he averages each night.

Instead, Tennessee found other avenues, the ones that have at one point or another in their careers taken over games and willed the Vols to wins. That's a positive sign as the NCAA Tournament looms.

“We’ve got a lot of these guys that have been with us for a long time and they’ve been in games like this," Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said. "...It was going to be a difficult game if we could stay in it for as long as we could, knowing how explosive (Alabama) can be. But Jahmai Mashack, Santi (Vescovi), Josiah James, guys that have been around for a long time, they made a lot of plays, especially Josiah getting on the glass. (Zeigler), what he does...

"Our older guys were the ones, guys that have been in those type of situations, they were ones that really stayed in there with us and helped us at the end.”

James and Mashack were especially crucial.

The two players who have had to play every position on the floor at least once in the last 3-5 seasons had to make up for the large stretches of time Tennessee's two bigs in Aidoo and Tobe Awaka missed in the first half because of foul trouble.

Barnes anticipated having to change to a smaller lineup.

"We knew that (Alabama) was going to come out and try to get our bigs in foul trouble just because of how things went in Knoxville and how we dominated them in the paint," James said. "We knew coming in that we might need to go small and that I might have to play some five and (Mashack) would have to as well. So we were prepared. I think it just goes back to our preparation and we were able to execute that in the first half."

“Coming in with this group, we knew that there was a real possibility that we would go with (James) at the five and Jahmai, because those guys, since they’ve been here, they guard every spot on the floor," Barnes added. "We talked about coming in, we might get (into a smaller lineup) at some point in time, didn’t know it would be that early."

It had all the hallmarks of a Barnes-coached game. Tennessee played elite defense down the stretch, holding Alabama to 3-of-23 shooting over the final 14 minutes of regulation.

Mashack followed up his three by chasing down the ensuing rebound, dishing the ball to Zeigler along the sideline before Aidoo finished the possession with an and-1. Similar sequences have won the Vols a lot of games under Barnes and it could win a lot in the NCAA Tournament.

But Tennessee's sights aren't set past South Carolina. The No. 18 Gamecocks, who handed the Vols a rare loss in Knoxville last month, host them in Columbia in a rematch Wednesday night

Tennessee caps the regular season with No. 16 Kentucky at Food City Center this weekend before the SEC Tournament in Nashville. The Vols aren't looking ahead, but after Saturday night's outing, it's hard to find any glaring weaknesses that will prevent them from a conference championship—and more.

"(Winning the SEC) is the most important thing to us right now," James said. "It is the first goal we have in mind, the first championship that we want to win. The two teams that we have next are just as good as anybody in the league and it's going to be just as tough."

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