Photo By Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics
CHICAGO — DeWayne Brown attacked the paint, lofting a pass to Felix Okpara who completed the alley-oop with a thunderous dunk.
Tennessee basketball made a halftime adjustment and killed Iowa State on the same action over-and-over again in the second half, knocking off the Cyclones 76-62 Friday night to advance to the Elite Eight for a third straight season.
“We’ve seen that play on repeat tonight,” TBS announcer Steve Lappas said following the Okpara slam.
Tennessee struggled against Iowa State’s ball pressure in the first half, turning it over 10 times. The Cyclones were in a “red” ball screen coverage, doubling Tennessee’s guards. Rick Barnes loves off-ball screening and does not like his offense to be overly reliant on ball screens.
But with Iowa State’s pressure defense making it difficult to create open looks off pin down screens, the Vols adjusted by leaning more on ball screens.
“We know that they rotate,” Tennessee assistant Lucas Campbell told RTI postgame. “We know they go for steals so we had really hammered it home and I think the guys were over cautious to start the game and then kind of settled into it.”
“Coming out of halftime, Coach kind of looked at it and realized that they’re putting two on the ball and if they’re putting two on the ball we got bigs, obviously all our bigs can play out of the short roll,” freshman DeWayne Brown told RTI postgame.
The adjustment was simple. Tennessee’s big men would set a screen and short roll. The Vols’ guards got them the ball and the big men initiated offense playing four versus three against Iowa State’s defense.
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Tennessee’s first basket of the second half out of the short roll came when J.P. Estrella kicked it to Bishop Boswell on the right wing with the sophomore shooting guard knocking down the triple.
The most prevalent play was the big-to-big alley-oop. Tennessee hit two of them in the second half and drew a foul off another. But the Vols big men were also aggressive themselves attacking the basket. Brown scored on a runner. Estrella missed two shots off of it but Jaylen Carey cleaned it up with put backs both times.
“Just playing through the rim,” Brown said. “If the big is back, you attack it. If the big is up we know we can throw the lob to Fe(lix), throw the lob to JP. That’s kind of the read.”
“We’re versatile. We know how to play with each other,” Okpara told RTI. “Just being able to trust ourself and throwing lobs, throwing good passes and just finishing.”
Including the Carey second chance baskets, Tennessee scored 13 points in the first 12 minutes of the second half off of the short roll before Iowa State mixed in a zone defense and eventually had to gamble even more.
Tennessee made Iowa State pay for its aggressiveness. After turning it over 10 times in the first half, the Vols turned it over seven times in the second half and scored a number of easy baskets.
It’s a major credit to Barnes and his staff for making the adjustment, Tennessee’s ball handlers for unselfishly giving the basketball up and its front court for making the right reads.
“We did it in the beginning of the game and got to it even more in the second half,” Boswell told RTI. “They really trap the ball screens and do a good job getting it out of our guards hands. Our bigs were just able to make plays out of it.”
