Tennessee basketball will miss Zakai Zeigler, but his story is far from over

Tennessee basketball is in Year 3 of a rebuild under Rick Barnes following the NBA departures of Grant Williams, Admiral Schofield and Jordan Bone. The Vols are facing North Carolina, a Tar Heels squad that will fall just short of a national title to Kansas in a little over 4 months.

None of that matters right now. For the time being, North Carolina’s Caleb Love and RJ Davis are having trouble staying afloat against Tennessee’s lightning quick point guard trio of Kennedy Chandler, Santiago Vescovi and Zakai Zeigler. By game’s end, the Tennessee trio will combine for 49 points, 16 assists and 5 steals in an 89-72 victory.

Hubert Davis and company expected as much from Chandler and Vescovi. But like everyone else, he and the Tar Heels wildly underestimated the 5-9 freshman Zeigler who — stop me if you’ve heard this before — was without a Division I offer just 5 months prior. Zeigler finished as Tennessee’s leading scorer with 18 points, 5 assists and 2 steals in just the 4th game of his college career.

To this day, folks continue to underestimate Zakai Zeigler, just as every Division I program outside of Tennessee did in the Summer of 2021. And 3 and a half years later, he and the Vols just keep winning.

What makes Zakai Zeigler great hasn’t changed since that win over the Tar Heels back in 2021. He’s a more efficient scorer, and somehow, he’s even more of a pest on defense. Zeigler has an exemplary work ethic and never, ever quits. Not in a million years. “That fight in him, that DNA, I wish I could bottle it,” said head coach Rick Barnes. “First time I saw him… he’s the same. What you see him do (in-game), he does every day in practice.”

Barnes has done nothing but rave about Zeigler for the past 4 years. You can tell he truly loves him, both as a basketball player and as a human being. At the Vol Tipoff Club in January of this year, Barnes insisted “He’s been a fighter his whole life, he’s been told he’s too small, he can’t do this, he can’t do that. To have him every day do what he does is an incredible blessing that God gave me, because I don’t know that I’d still be doing it. Because of him, he makes me enjoy practice every day.”

Zeigler will play his final college game very soon. He’s guaranteed just 5 more — 3 regular-season matchups, at least 1 SEC Tournament draw and at least 1 NCAA Tournament game. Precisely how many more games he’ll suit up for depends on himself, top scoring option Chaz Lanier and the rest of the 2024-25 Volunteers roster.

Tennessee’s white whale

At the end of last season, Nate Oats and the Alabama Crimson Tide beat Clemson to advance to the first Final Four in program history. Mark Sears — one of the best players in the SEC, then and now — scored a game-high 23 points. The Tide fell to UConn in the Final Four to end Year 5 of the Nate Oats era.

On the other side of the bracket, Dalton Knecht and Tennessee fell to Zach Edey and Purdue, despite Knecht’s herculean 39-point effort.

And still, a Final Four berth remains Tennessee’s white whale. The Vols are probably the most relevant program today without a matchup in the last weekend, alongside Mizzou, BYU and Xavier. Some Tennessee fans refer to this fact as a serious point of contention against Rick Barnes, though to the vast majority it elicits nothing more than reasonable criticism. Barnes is objectively one of the best college coaches in the game today, but it’s hard to take a look at reality and not come to the conclusion that he has underperformed when it matters most.

That 2019 team I mentioned at the top of the page didn’t make the Final Four. Kennedy Chandler, Zeigler and John Fulkerson couldn’t make the Final Four during their SEC Championship year. Even last year’s team, which featured one of the most talented Vols in history, couldn’t get the job done. But that’s the beauty and brutality of March: There are 67 losers and 1 winner.

Because of Zeigler, some key transfer additions and the growth of Jordan Gainey off the bench, these Vols will give Tennessee just as much opportunity to reach the Final Four as Dalton Knecht and company did in 2024. Tennessee is 23-5 with wins over Florida, Texas A&M, Missouri, Illinois, Louisville, Baylor and Mississippi State — all of which have cracked the top 25 at some point or another this season. According to KenPom the Vols boast the best overall defense in the country — tied with the 2023 team for the best defensive unit Barnes has ever had in Knoxville.