KNOXVILLE — Tennessee didn’t need Nate Ament at all during this past Tuesday’s 19-point triumph at South Carolina.
The Volunteers missed him significantly Saturday.
Tennessee had a wretched start to its regular-season finale against Vanderbilt at the Food City Center, falling behind by 13 points within the first seven minutes and having to scramble the rest of the way in an 86-82 loss. The No. 24 Commodores led wire to wire in improving to 24-7 overall and closing their Southeastern Conference slate at 11-7, while the No. 23 Vols fell to 21-10 and 11-7.
“We had turnovers, and we didn’t establish what we wanted to do,” Tennessee 11th-year coach Rick Barnes said. “We didn’t have very good guard play, and when you do what we did at the start of the game, you have to play near-perfect basketball against a team that’s as good and as well-coached as Vanderbilt is.
“The way we started left us playing uphill the whole game.”
Ament, who is averaging 17.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, hasn’t played since the 71-69 loss to Alabama on Feb. 28 due to a high-ankle sprain. Barnes does believe his five-star freshman talent will be available for next week’s league tournament at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
“I do,” Barnes said. “Obviously we’re going to listen to our doctors. He’s feeling better, but he hasn’t done anything in practice since his last game.”
By winning Saturday, the Commodores claimed the No. 4 seed for the SEC tournament and the double-bye into the quarterfinals that comes with it. Tennessee, as a result, is now the 5 seed and will start play Thursday in the second round instead of Friday.
More important for Vanderbilt than conference positioning, however, was the fact the Commodores prevailed at the Food City Center for the first time since 2017, snapping an eight-game skid in the building.
“I know this is big for our fans,” Vandy second-year coach Mark Byington said after evening his record to 2-2 against Tennessee. “Rick has done an unbelievable job with this basketball program, but I think this feels good for our fans and for our guys to beat a good team. I know there is a lot of pride in Vanderbilt. Our football team won here, and our women’s basketball team won here.
“We’ve got a terrific school and a terrific program, but sometimes I feel like we’re chasing them. They got us the first time at home in a hard-fought game, and we got them here in a hard-fought game. They are two evenly matched teams.”
Sophomore guard Tyler Tanner led the Commodores with 25 points, going 7-of-9 from the floor and making both of his 3-point attempts. The former Brentwood Academy standout was also 9-of-10 on free throws, with Vandy going 27-of-32 as a team (84.4%) from the foul line..
Senior center AK Okereke added 17 points for the Commodores before fouling out with 48 seconds to play.
“This was a huge win, and we really needed it,” Tanner said. “It was going to be a fight from start to finish against a really good team. We want to be peaking at the right time.
“It’s not January. We want to peak in March and hopefully April.”
Amaree Abram’s free throw with 32.6 seconds to play pulled Tennessee within 82-78, and the Vols caused a turnover on the inbounds pass, but Ja’Kobi Gillespie then missed a 3-point attempt to all but end any chances of a comeback. Gillespie scored 17 points after being honored at senior day, but he was just 5-of-21 from the floor and 1-of-11 from 3-point range.
Freshman Amari Evans again replaced Ament in the starting lineup and had a career-best 24 points and six rebounds.
“I feel like I’ve always had the same confidence,” Evans said. “I was just trying to do what my team needed me to do today.”
Vols sophomore forward J.P. Estrella had 20 points, all in the second half, and 10 rebounds, while senior forward Felix Okpara tallied eight points and 10 boards. Tennessee junior forward Jaylen Carey had a nightmare outing against his former team, with the Vandy transfer going scoreless in less than 12 minutes of action.
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Two jumpers from Okereke helped stake Vandy to a 6-0 lead within the first two minutes, and Chandler Bing’s layup at the 13:33 mark extended the lead to 15-2 and resulted in Barnes using a 30-second timeout. The Commodores were still up comfortably at 26-15 when Troy Henderson’s 3-pointer followed by an Evans steal and layup made it 26-20 with 3:35 before halftime.
Vandy was able to push its lead back to 32-22 after an ugly first half by the Vols that contained 32.1% shooting and nine turnovers, matching their game total during the 69-65 win at Memorial Gym in Nashville just two weekends ago. Evans had 12 of Tennessee’s 22 points, and Okpara’s jumper with 2:43 before the break accounted for the only first-half points by a Vols post player.
“I just think we needed to come out with the right energy at the start,” Estrella said. “We knew that it was senior day, and we were ready to go, but the second the game started, the energy started to fade away a little bit. After that slump to open the game, we started to get things going, but the start of the game put us in a bad spot.”
The Commodores punched first in the second half as well, with Tanner’s 3-pointer and two free throws from Okereke quickly building their bulge to 37-22, and a pair of Tanner free throws with 13:53 to play increased their lead to 51-34. The Vols didn’t get within single digits in the second half until Gillespie’s layup on a pass from Bishop Boswell in transition pulled them within 65-57 with 7:22 remaining.
Contact David Paschall at [email protected].
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David Paschall has covered sports at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since 1999 and wrote for the Chattanooga Free Press in the nine years before that. David has mostly covered college athletics, with a focus on the University of Georgia from 2000 to 2019 and the University of Tennessee since 2020. He grew up in Chattanooga and is a graduate of the Baylor School and Auburn University. David has received multiple writing awards and has served as a Heisman Trophy voter since 2003. He has also worked in radio in Chattanooga and has been on the SEC Network’s “Classic Rewind” series since 2014. David and his wife, Kelly, have three children — Conner, Emily and Spencer.
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