Analyzing Tennessee's Win Over Duke

The Tennessee Volunteers' stifling defense got them past the Duke Blue Devils; their performance at that end is becoming a calling card in the NCAA Tournament.

Rick Barnes had taken a lot of criticism for short tournament runs since taking over at Tennessee. The Vols had advanced out of the first weekend just once in Barnes' seven years in Knoxville. With the way Tennessee played down the stretch, it didn't look like they had a Sweet 16 run in them.

However, without Zakai Zeigler, the Vols found the dominant defense that once made them one of the top teams in college basketball. Duke scored their lowest total in an NCAA Tournament game, and the Vols won in Orlando, 67-52.

Overall, the game was very ugly, especially in the first half. A very loose whistle favored the Volunteers, who were the more physical and aggressive team. Tennessee was walling off the Duke guards in gaps for the most part and only had 11 fouls as a team.

Tennessee had their best shooting day in quite some time, specifically from the outside, as they finished 9-21 from three. Santiago Vescovi also controlled the game well in the first half, as he was effective coming off screens. Vescovi hit four of the nine Volunteer threes.

Rick Barnes, Tennessee HC

The star of the show today thought was Olivier Nkamhoua. One of the questions heading into the tournament was did Tennessee have a second go-to guy outside of Vescovi. Obviously, Josiah-Jordan James was there at times, but without Zeigler, the Vols did not have an initiator of offense besides Vescovi.

Nkamhoua was that today and more. The forward finished with a game-high 27 points, matching his season high from earlier this season against Texas. Nkamhoua was doing everything from hitting threes to rim running to hitting tough fade-aways. When the Vols needed a performance for the ages, Nkamhoua gave it to them.

On the Duke side, losing Mark Mitchell did not help them today. I wrote about how Mitchell was important today for Duke on both sides of the ball. The freshman wing would've been able to get in the lane against the Tennessee defense, and he would've been able to limit Vescovi or Nkamhoua on the defensive end.

Regardless, this was a huge win for the Tennessee program. The Vols will now take on the winner of Florida Atlantic and Fairleigh Dickinson in New York City in the Sweet 16. The path to advance even further is wide open if the Vols can play as they did today.

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