Pearl celebrates 200th game as UT head coach with victory, season sweep of Vanderbilt
Scotty Hopson scored 19 points and Melvin Goins added 15 as the Volunteers rallied from an 11-point deficit to complete the season sweep of in-state rival Vanderbilt in Nashville Tuesday night, winning 60-51.
The win celebrated Bruce Pearl’s 200th game at the healm of Tennessee basketball, and the man donning the orange blazer was all smiles after the game as fans stuck around to cheer on the team three hours away from Knoxville.
Tennessee (17-11, 7-6 SEC) won its second in three games, whereas the Commodores of Vanderbilt (20-7, 8-5) saw their five-game winning streak snapped.
The talk of the town, or nation rather, after the game concerning the Vols was not about the come-from-behind victory performed to perfection, hitting 11-of-12 free thows over the final 2:52, but rumors of an official notice of allegations from the NCAA handed down to UT, which was delivered Tuesday. Nonetheless, Pearl was pleased with the fans’ commaraderie and allegiance to the school inside Memorial Gym Tuesday night.
“All of a sudden, I look up and all of our fans still stuck around,” Pearl said. “That’s what makes it such a rivalry … We finally gave our fans something. We put our fans through a lot this year on and off the court, and so it was good to reward them a little bit for staying with us.”
The same Tennessee team that could not hit a late free throw or rally against Georgia in last weekend’s 69-63 loss did just that against a dangerous Vanderbilt foe, and on the road. The Vols trailed at the half 31-27 and endured an 11-4 Commodore run to start the second half, thanks in part to a tomahawk dunk by Commodore Jeff Taylor with 15:45 to go.
Vanderbilt star and SEC scoring leader John Jenkins finished the night with only 11 points, and the Vols held Vandy to the fewest points ever scored against Tennessee in Memorial Gym.
“We thought we had them this time,” Jenkins said after the game. “We were at home, so we thought we had a good advantage, but it didn’t work out for us.”
A Pearl timeout at the 12:55 mark worked wonders for the Vols, who were facing a surging wave of home-team momentum inside Memorial Gym. With the Commodores up 42-31, it looked as though UT was ready to be blown out of Nashville.
A steal and a layup by Goins, who reached double digits in scoring for only the fourth time in SEC play this season, as well as a jumper from Tennessee center Brian Willams, got the Big Orange back on track. Tobias Harris, who finished with 10 points, hit a free throw, and Hopson followed with a game-tying layup that put the teams at 49 apiece with 5:27 left.
Taylor scored two points for Vanderbilt with 5:01 left to play, but this was the last time the Commordoes would see a lead of their own. Tennessee would go on to hit 14-of-21 free throws on the night to help cap a roaring Tennessee run versus Vanderbilt, who shot 14-of-19 from the charity stripe.
Tennessee forced 16 turnovers in the game, an improvement from the Commodores’ last effort in Knoxville earlier this season, when they turned the ball over a season-high 21 times in SEC play. The Vols tallied15 steals on the game, largerly in part to the scrappy, do-it-all play of senior Steven Pearl on the court, who matched his career-high of six points in the win.
The Volunteers look to keep momentum in their favor as they close the month of February at home against Mississippi State this Saturday at 6 p.m. at Thompson-Boling Arena.
