Illinois Brought the Noise, But No. 1 Tennessee Took Home the Win

But that’s not where the celebration could be found.

The party was in the visiting locker room, where the Vols (10-0) were enjoying the hard-earned fruits of their first true 40-minute game of the year. With leading scorer Chaz Lanier and leading playmaker Zakai Zeigler on the bench with five fouls and 5.7 seconds left in a tie game, sixth man Jordan Gainey inbounded the ball to Igor Milicic Jr., accepted a handoff with a full head of steam and raced 70 feet to scoop in a layup as time expired to give Tennessee the 66-64 victory.

The win was so dramatic and surreal, even seeing wasn’t believing. “I’m excited about watching the tape,” said Tennessee coach Rick Barnes, “because I’m shocked we were able to get it done with all that foul trouble. But these guys found a way to do it.”

“We’re tough,” Milicic said. “Everything was against us. The crowd was loud. The refs weren’t helping. And we just had to stick together and pull this off. We’re some tough dudes.”

Gainey, who scored 18 of his Tennessee career-high 23 points in the second half, said it was no big deal — just running the last-second play they work on almost every day in practice. Barnes, meanwhile, credited the late, great Morgan Wootton, the legendary coach at DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland,  with designing that play. It goes back to when Barnes was a go-getting 26-year-old and had been hired by Joe Harrington in 1980 to be an assistant at George Mason. 

“We didn’t have a big recruiting budget, so Joe Harrington said we needed to put out a monthly newsletter to all the (high school) coaches within the 250-mile radius to try to get George Mason on the map,” Barnes said. “So I worked with our SID and we came up with a segment of it where we were going to call it ‘Coaches Corner,’ where we were going to ask the different coaches around the D.C. area to put together their favorite play.

Barnes drove over to DeMatha to meet with Wootton. “I said, ‘Coach, you’ve been doing this a long time. I need you to give me your favorite play. He said ‘OK’ and gave it to me.”

Neither Wootton nor anyone else with a long run in basketball would have enjoyed the first half at Illinois on Saturday. Tennessee had one assist on six field goals. Illinois had two assists on its six baskets. But the Volunteers made 17 of 24 free throws and the Illini hit 17 of 21 because everything was a foul — except some of the most physical stuff that occurred.

For example, chiseled 6-foot-4, 202-pound Tennessee senior Jahmai Mashack was guarding Illinois freshman Kasparas Jakucionis 30 feet from the hoop when he decided to rip the ball out of his arms, discard the 6-foot-6 Lithuanian to the ground and start steaming up court.

Every time a big man set a high screen — on both sides — it was not done with a smile. Ten players had two fouls at halftime, when the Volunteers held a 31-30 edge.

But when the 5-foot-9 Zeigler — dubbed “Angry Elf” by the Illini students when he deigned to dispute a call — picked his third foul at 18:14 and his fourth a second later, the Volunteers wound up playing without their floor leader for the next 14 minutes.

But this No. 1 team had an answer. Actually, multiple answers. Eighth man Darlinstone Dubar, who didn’t play in Tuesday’s win over Miami due to a concussion, drilled a floater and a three-pointer midway through the second half just when Tennessee needed it. Jakucionis (22 points) answered with two four-point plays in a three-minute stretch to give Illinois a 50-44 lead with 11:21 to go.

“We were teetering,” Barnes admitted.

But Gainey was the constant, hitting three three-pointers during the final nine minutes to help set up the dramatic final sequence. A short while after Gainey’s game-winner had dropped through, Underwood was beating himself up for not giving himself a chance to to set up his defense properly. “Point-blank, I should have called the timeout,” he said. “We weren’t quite where we needed to be.”

But losses in December aren’t fatal, as Barnes and Underwood know very well. “Both teams played their hearts out,” Barnes said. “We’ll learn from it. They’ll learn from it. I told Brad if we can keep getting better, we both have a chance at pretty good years.”

“We got better today, even though they had two more points than us,” Underwood said.

When Underwood completed his postgame radio interview, he accepted a piece of chocolate cake, thanked the students for their support and told them the team would need them for the big games ahead. No doubt there will be more wins to come for Underwood this winter, but on this birthday the sweet taste of victory belonged to someone else.