Tennessee basketball opened its 2021-22 season with a 90-62 win over UT-Martin Tuesday night.
The Vols struggled on the defensive end for much of the game, especially the first seven minutes of the game. It became evident that life for Tennessee’s defense is far different without Yves Pons anchoring the defense.
“It was incredible to have Yves (Pons) in there,” power forward Olivier Nkamhoua said. “Yves is the best defender I’ve ever played with, but we can’t think about that. We have to think about the defensive tools that we have and what we have right now is we have good size, we have good speed, we have strong guards, we have fast guards, we have bigs that are capable of doing what Yves does in different ways and making up for that. We just have to focus on what we have and not what we lost. I’m happy forYves, Yves is doing big things right now, so I think we need to not worry about Yves and weneed to figure ourselves out.”
Offensively, Tennessee exploded from three-point range, making a program high 17 triples. The Vols attempted 40 shots from beyond the arc, almost double the amount they averaged last season.
Santiago Vescovi led the way making six triples, Kennedy Chandler made four and Auburn transfer Justin Powell made three.
“I think it’s just fun to play around these players,” Vescovi said. “We have a lot of shooters this year. A lot ofpeople that can pass the ball, can drag two people, and just hit the open man. I think it’s justsuper fun to play with these people. We have confidence in every single teammate that wehave, I think everybody can shoot it. I think it’s really fun.”
Hear what Vescovi, Nkamhoua and Chandler said postgame below.
