This is Volunteer country. Where Uber drivers pull up proudly rocking their Tennessee orange and where stripes are always in season. Where high schoolers peek through the tempered glass of a closed-off gym trying to catch a glimpse of three of the best guards in the country. Where the Tennessee men’s basketball team has instilled a different type of energy throughout the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. That’s in part due to the dominant backcourt trio that led this year’s squad to tie the best start in program history, when it stormed out the gates to 14-0.
One member of that trio is leading the SEC in dimes with 7.6 a night. Another’s dropping 18.4 per game on anyone silly enough to drop back from the three-point line. And the third’s got a knack for silencing student sections and ending games with the flick of his wrist. Zakai Zeigler, Chaz Lanier and Jordan Gainey have got the Tennessee Volunteers sitting at No. 6 in the AP poll as they venture deeper into a stacked SEC conference lineup.
For the past two and a half months, they’ve been stitching their contributions to the cultural fabric of Tennessee hoops under the direction of legendary head coach Rick Barnes. The chemistry and connectivity that’s been witnessed through 19 games didn’t just click one day. The program’s star guards have been building toward this since the summer, featuring months and months of 1 on 1s.
“Oh, me and JG, every single day in practice,” Zakai says. “I’m telling you, people don’t understand, we go at each other like we don’t know each other. Like, we be talking trash, we be talking crazy to each other. Start fouling, we’ll start doing stuff outside of basketball. But you know, just being that competitor, we understand that when we go against each other like that, when we go out on the court and play against somebody we don’t know, it’s gonna be like, Oh this ain’t nothin’.”
Jared ebanks 