These X-Factor Players May Shape Men’s College Basketball’s Title Race
The ceiling of these contenders could come down to the performance of a more under-the-radar name.
Zakai Zeigler, Tennessee
Stop me if this sounds familiar:
Tennessee is a top team with an elite defense that occasionally gets hamstrung by its own sporadic scoring. The Vols have had success the past few seasons employing similar defense-first approaches—Rick Barnes has done a stellar job on that front—but haven’t made it past the first weekend of the tournament in that period, and have done so just once in his tenure. So while there’s plenty of reason to trust their effort and consistency on the defensive end to keep games close in the postseason, there’s fair skepticism as to whether these guys will actually score enough to make a deep run.
It appears that most of those crucial shot-creation duties will fall on sophomore guard Zeigler, who moved into the starting lineup a few weeks ago and supplies plenty of energy. However, he can be streaky, he’s not extraordinarily efficient and he doesn’t have ideal size with which to impose himself on games: Zeigler is listed at just 5'9" and certainly isn’t taller than that. We’ve seen small guards dominate college basketball in the past, and there’s a lot to love about Zeigler’s approach and effort—he’s quick, tenacious on defense and gets the most out of what he has. But for Tennessee to be a legitimate Final Four–caliber team befitting its ranking, he may have to carry them every night.
After stepping into the starting lineup, Zeigler strung together a series of solid performances, including 22 points and 10 assists in a big nonconference win over Texas, but he’s still prone to the occasional bad game—he’s scored in single digits on seven occasions this season, and against better opponents, that’s probably not going to get it done. Other than Santiago Vescovi, who’s played more of an off-ball role next to Zeigler and primarily moves the ball and shoots threes, the Vols don’t really have other creative players, occasionally feeding big man Olivier Nkamhoua, but mostly relying on group effort to scrap together sufficient offense (they’re among the nation’s top teams in assisted field goal percentage). It’s just really hard to win that way in the postseason, particularly when you’re not a high-end three-point shooting team (32.4%).
Bottom line, there are a lot of sporadic offensive contributors in the rotation here due to the fact that Tennessee runs a lot of sets to get offense—it relies more on flow and doesn’t have a nominal go-to guy (at least not yet). Zeigler is probably the guy who’s going to have to create and take the big shots for the Vols—it may take quite an individual effort from him for Tennessee to get over the hump and into the further rounds of the tournament. But he also strikes me as the caliber of competitor I like to bet on succeeding in pressure situations, and some heroic performances could potentially be on tap.
