The Tennessee basketball team found a way to win a defensive slugfest on the road on Tuesday night against LSU. Winning on the road is never easy, especially in the SEC. It wasn’t pretty, but the Volunteers got the job done against the Tigers with a 65-59 victory. Chaz Lanier had a nice game as he finished with 14 points and nine rebounds, but Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes is still looking for him to be better in one specific area.
Finishing with 14 points and nine rebounds is a good stat line, but the Tennessee basketball team needs Chaz Lanier to be taking more shots.
“We like the fact that Chaz (Lanier) is doing that (rebounding), but he needs to work harder to get about eight more shots a game,” Rick Barnes said, according to an article from Rivals. “And to do that, again, we want to get him more shots, but again, LSU I thought did a great job defending his first actions and what we’re trying to get him into. And again, we were sloppy. We had some chances I think that we could have probably got it to him with cleaner passes, but we didn’t. But again, you always have to give your opponent credit for that when it doesn’t happen.”
Lanier was 5-11 in Tuesday’s win against LSU, so it sounds like Barnes wants him to be getting closer to 20 shots in a game. Still, he is finding ways to make a big impact even when he isn’t shooting as much as his coach would like.
“But Chaz is more than a shooter,” Barnes said. “We know he’s a terrific standstill, spot-up shooter. But when he wants to drive the ball, he’s proven he can do that. And the fact that you mentioned his rebounding, that’s something he didn’t do very much of at the beginning of the year. And he’s trying to impact the game in different ways.”
Tennessee put a big emphasis on rebounding coming into this game, and they certainly did a good job in that aspect of the contest. Their dominance on the boards was a big reason why they won, as they out-rebounded LSU 44-28.
“What I really make of our team tonight was the respect that they had for LSU,” Barnes added. “We talked about it. I obviously have a great deal of respect for Matt (McMahon) and his entire staff, and when you lose players like he did early in the year and continue to find a way to just keep his guys in games. We talked a lot about it, his team. And I thought we, mentally, were sloppy on offense, but they had something to do with that. I thought they played hard, they screened hard. But we felt coming in that was our number one emphasis, that we had to get to the offensive board, had to get to the lane as much as we could.”
With the win, the Tennessee basketball team improved to 23-5 overall on the season and 10-5 in SEC play. The Volunteers have just three more games left in the regular season, and their next matchup is a big one as they will host #6 Alabama on Saturday.
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