No Nate Ament, no problem for Tennessee tonight in Columbia, South Carolina. The Volunteers beat South Carolina on their senior night, 78-59. Tennessee was fortunate tonight with how the schedule worked out, playing the 3-13 Gamecocks without Ament’s services.
It was a bit of a different looking attack for Tennessee tonight as the offense really ran through the big men. Inconsistent all year, they were not tonight. Rick Barnes and the Tennessee staff clearly saw something they liked on tape, force-feeding
the paint and coming away with dunk after dunk.
South Carolina had no answers.
Tennessee built a 40-28 lead by halftime, and that theme would continue in the second. Despite South Carolina’s best efforts and hot shooting from three, the Volunteers pulled away with lobs and dunks. Felix Okpara was a force coming to the rim and Ja’Kobi Gillespie just kept finding him.
J.P. Estrella was in on the action, too.
Gillespie, who had a quiet night scoring the ball, drilled a three with nine minutes to play to give Tennessee a 15-point lead. The senior point guard would pick up his tenth assist of the night on the following possession.
For South Carolina, it was the Meechie Johnson and Nordin Kapic show. Unfortunately for the Gamecocks, those two are about the only ones who showed up.
Tennessee’s physicality and defense pushed the lead out to 20 with four minutes to play, and that was that.
Okpara’s big night concluded with 20 points and eight rebounds. Estrella actually ended up as the team’s leading scorer, dropping 22 points on 10-13 shooting. Gillespie scored just eight points, but came up with 12 assists.
Tennessee scored 56 points in the paint compared to South Carolina’s 18 — that pretty much tells the story of this one.
The Volunteers return home for the final game of the regular season on Saturday against Vanderbilt.
