Tennessee vs Kentucky: Round 3

Image: Tennessee Athletics

By Jon Reed

We are closing in on the biggest game in the Kentucky Tennessee rivalry.

The Wildcats have a commanding 163-78 lead in the series. They’ve recently flipped the script on Rick Barnes and now hold a 12-11 record against his Tennessee teams thanks to their current three-game winning streak, a streak that started in March of 2024 as the Cats spoiled Senior Night for Dalton Knecht, Santiago Vescovi, and Josiah-Jordan James thanks to red-hot shooting from deep.

The Cats hit 15 of their 29 threes. In the 2025 season, Kentucky replicated that formula by going 12-24 in both games. My calculator tells me that means that in the last 120 minutes of game time, Kentucky made 29 of their 57 attempts. That’s 50.9%.

On the other hand, the Vols have been ice cold against the neighbors form up north shooting a combined 26-99. That’s 26.3%. If you look at just this season alone, that number falls to 14-63. That’s 22.2%.

On Friday night, these numbers will be proven to either be cruel foreshadowing of Tennessee’s fate or to be deemed nothing more than inconsequential canon for a historic Volunteer victory.

Friday is all that matters.

The first two matchups of this season, the 23 times Rick Barnes has faced the Wildcats, the 241 battles that have taken place over the last 115 years, the 17 dates on Kentucky’s Final Four banner and the empty space in Tennessee’s rafters for theirs. . .

None of it matters.

It’s all about Friday night in Indianapolis.

And the Vols are coming into Friday night’s Sweet 16 matchup hot, winners of 10 of their last 12 with wins over Auburn, Florida, and Alabama compared to Kentucky, who has won only 7 of their last 11 with only a road game at Missouri and the second round win over Illinois to hang their hats on.

Even still, I went back to watch both previous matchups to see if anything other than the shooting jumped out.

From a Tennessee perspective, yes. It truly felt like watching a different team.

Which makes complete sense, because Tennessee has been a completely different team since those matchups. According to my friend StatsByWill (go subscribe to his substack and support his great college basketball coverage, and also listen to our podcasts that we did together on the FanRun Podcast Network), the Vols are the 11th-best offense in the country since their surprising blowout win over the Florida Gators.

The team in orange that I just watched against Kentucky, especially in the first matchup in Knoxville, felt closer to 100th than 11th.

How did the turnaround happen?

In the first nine SEC games (Arkansas through the win against Florida), Tennessee averaged only 66.4 points per game and shot 30% from three-point range with 45.17% of their shots coming from deep. In the 12 games since that dominant second-half, Tennessee is averaging 75.1 points per game while shooting 35.1% from 3 with 41% of their shots coming from deep.

To simplify, Rick Barnes got his team to dial back a bit on three-point attempts, likely eliminating a couple of bad looks per game, and got them going to the rim more often.

(Speaking of bad looks, I couldn’t help but notice that Darlinstone Dubar shot SEVEN(!!!) threes against Kentucky in the first matchup. That was his season high. He hit only one of them. He had five attempts against Alabama in early March but did not attempt more than two deep shots in any other game down the stretch.)

Some key players also just started making shots, which also helps an offense.

Zakai Zeigler and Chaz Lanier both struggled immensely against Kentucky in the regular season. Zakai went 1-13 from three. Lanier went 3-17. Jordan Gainey went 2-12. I went back and charted all of their misses. 22 of their 36 misses were graded as “open to wide-open” looks.  

Zakai has morphed into a much different shooter following his 1-11 performance in the Knoxville game. From the beginning of SEC play through that contest, the All-American PG hit only 13 of his 50 (26%) 3-point attempts. He responded to that humiliation by hitting 26 of his next 60 (43.3%!!!) from that game onward. When you use the trip to Lexington as the measuring stick, those numbers go to 20-60 (33%) pre-Kentucky2 to 19-50 (38%) post-Kentucky2.

He went from a shooting liability to a marksman. He should enter the Sweet 16 with a lot of confidence.

Chaz Lanier morphed into a much different player following the Kentucky matchups. His shooting had the same uptick, from 33-98 (33.67%) from the Arkansas game through KY2 to 36-84 (42.86%) afterwards. The shooting slump ended, and the nonconference sharpshooter reemerged.

However, the bigger story may be the change in his mindset. Lanier had a pretty surprisingly impressive dunk over defenders late in the Kentucky game that was almost more frustrating than it was exciting in the moment.

Seriously? Where has this been all game?

But it maybe unlocked something for him. At the very least, it may have given him some much needed confidence after getting knocked around at the rim early on in conference play. From that late Kentucky dunk on, Lanier has been more willing to drive to the rim. The numbers bear it out.

In the first 13 SEC games, Chaz attempted 58.4% of his 178 shots from outside the three-point line; In his next 11 games that number fell to 46.9%. Remember earlier when I told you that Tennessee’s offense had taken off and that its three-point rate had fallen 4%? Lanier encapsulates that more than any other player.

I regret to inform you that there is another stark difference that I must unfortunately point out.

Igor Milicic.

It was jaw-dropping watching him jump off the screen as a confident, versatile stretch-big. Igor was the best player in both Kentucky games, averaging 17.5 points and 9 rebounds on 7-12 from 3.

He has only three double digit scoring games in the 11 games since KY2. He’s grabbed 9 rebounds in zero of them. He’s regressed from a 40% shooter to a 31.4% one. His scoring average dropped over 5 points per game from 11.2 to 6.9.

Not great!

Tennessee’s best lineup at this point feels like one without him on the floor. Felix and the Four Guards creates havoc and opportunities. Yet, Igor- and probably Dubar- will have to provide good minutes and flexibility for the Vols when on the court.

Kentucky’s big man Amari Williams is a matchup problem for Tennessee. He is good at driving to the rim and creating looks for his teammates, and Mark Pope does a great job at creating mismatches through high screens and trying to force switches. How Rick Barnes and his staff gameplan those will be vital. Blitzing the ball handler with size and athleticism would help!

The Wildcats will come into matchup number 3 confident off of the heels of making easy work of Illinois in the second round. They have the 2-0 lead over the Vols and did so while battling injuries. They’re mostly healthy now.

Jaxson Robinson, who went 4-9 from 3 on his way to 17 points in Knoxville, is out for the year, but Andrew Carr and Lamont Butler are both healthy and playing. Hometown heroes Trent Noah and Travis Perry scored 19 combined points in the Lexington upset but have both fallen mostly out of the rotation. Same for Ansley Almonor who has seen his minutes fall to single digits down the stretch. He tallied 13 and 12 points in the two matchups while shooting 6-10 from 3.

All three guys were key figures in the story of the first two games.

Who will be the major actors in game 3? Will Zakai Zeigler and Chaz Lanier’s hot shooting averages continue or will Kentucky run the “make guys miss wide open shots” defense work again? Will Lamont Butler help spearhead another lopsided win in the turnover battle for Kentucky like he did against Illinois, where they won 14-5. Can Rick Barnes beat Mark Pope? Will any (other) Tennessee fans make the trek to Indy? Can Tennessee overcome 115 years of history?

Forty minutes on Friday will answer those questions.