Tennessee basketball concluded play at the Maui Invitational on Wednesday afternoon. The Vols went 1-2 in the loaded tournament, earning a win over Syracuse before falling to No. 2 Purdue and No. 1 Kansas on consecutive days.
Here’s three things I learned about Tennessee basketball in the three-game tournament and one question I have for them moving forward.
Scoring Is Still Going To Be An Issue Some Nights
After Tennessee’s hot start to the season it was tempting to think that the Vols’ game long offensive issues were going to be behind them.
That was proven in both of Tennessee’s losses but more dramatically in the Kansas loss. I wrote about the issues at length here so I’m going to keep this section limited.
But Tennessee lost another game because they went ice cold shooting from the perimeter. It was familiar to many of the Vols losses last season and proved as a reminder that Tennessee’s offense will remain inconsistent if Dalton Knecht has an off night.
Don’t Worry About Santiago Vescovi
I’m cheating here because I didn’t learn this during the three games at the Maui Invitational. While some were worried about Vescovi adjusting to a new role as he shot poorly to open the season, I was never worried about the super senior shooting guard.
We saw that in the first two games of the event when perimeter shots still weren’t falling for Vescovi but he found a number of other ways to impact the game on the offensive side of the ball. The Uruguay native was fantastic passing against Syracuse and then found a way to score without shooting well against Purdue.
Then the dam broke against Kansas. Vescovi finally got shots to fall— five triples in fact— and scored a game-high 22 points against the Jayhawks.
Vescovi was Tennessee’s best player in the Maui Invitational.
More From RTI: What Rick Barnes Said After Maui Invitational
Tennessee Is Putting A Lot On Jonas Aidoo’s Shoulders
This isn’t a brand new development. We knew that Tennessee was going to put a lot on both Jonas Aidoo and Tobe Awaka but as the season develops more it feel like Aidoo is shouldering more of that burden.
Aidoo played 27 minutes against Syracuse and Kansas while fouling out in just 13 minutes against Purdue. Now, some of this is hard to draw hard conclusions on because Awaka suffered an ankle injury against Syracuse that definitely impeded his playing time in that game and might have the rest of the tournament.
Still, Aidoo is clearly Tennessee’s most trusted big man right now and they’re going to put a lot on him especially on the defensive side of the ball.
With Tennessee playing a number of lesser defensive players and lineups this season, the Vols are banking on Aidoo to make plenty of “fix it” plays.
Leaving the Maui Invitational, Aidoo feels like one of the most important players on this team.
Can Tennessee get Zakai Zeigler back to form?
Now to the question. Zakai Zeigler is playing poorly right now.
The junior point guard is still working back into the groove of things after tearing his ACL to end last season. However, he’s starting to get starter minutes and averaged 23 minutes per game over the three-day event and his level of play is not matching that number of minutes.
Zeigler shot four-of-22 (18%) from the field and one-of-12 (8%) from three-point range. That poor shooting goes along with totaling more turnovers (11) than he did assists (8). The point guard’s defense was still at a very high level but the offense was holding Tennessee back.
Now Zeigler wasn’t full go for much of the preseason and he’s still working to get back to his old self. And that seems very possible still. It’s far too early to say that this is the player that Zeigler is now and that he won’t get back to the player he was. Again, way to premature to say that.
But Zeigler is not playing like he did last season or even his freshman season. Tennessee needs to get him back to that level by SEC play. That will have a large affect on Tennessee’s success this season.
