KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee almost followed up its latest flop in the Southeastern Conference tournament with another early exit from the 75th NIT.
Almost.
The No. 1 seeded Vols (19-14) stormed out to a 22-5 lead, but had to hold off the scrappy Savannah State Tigers (21-12) in the second half before escaping with a 65-51 first-round victory before a meager crowd of 6,289 at Thompson-Boling Arena on Tuesday night.
The Vols will host the No.
4 seed Middle Tennessee State, an 86-78 winner over No. 5 Marshall, in the second round at a date and time to be determined.
Jarnell Stokes led Tennessee with 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting. Trae Golden scored 11 and Yemi Makanjoula, who was starting for junior Jeronne Maymon, sidelined with a bruised right knee, and Josh Richardson each had 10 points. Makanjuola also had eight rebounds.
Stokes, Makanjoula and Richardson are all freshmen. Stokes earned All-SEC freshman honors this season.
“Yemi played really well accepting the starting role,” Tennessee coach Counzo Martin said. “He defended, played extremely hard, rebounded the ball and made his free throws (6 of 7). That was just impressive.”
Martin told Makanjoula, who is from Lagos, Nigeria, at Monday’s shootaround that he would start in place of Maymon.
Martin said Maymon, who averages 12.6 points and 8.1 rebounds, is day-to-day.
Maymon’s absence obviously weakened the Vols’ vaunted inside game. It’s a strong 1-2 punch with Maymon and Stokes both on the floor at the same time.
“It’s tough,” Martin said. “You’re talking about an all-league player, a guy who rebounds, a guy who really posts strong, a guy who facilitates the offense. You can’t lose a guy of that magnitude and think you’re going to click on all cylinders out of the gate. There was some major adjustment and some of the other guys had to step up.”
It was Makanjuola’s first start.
“I got a little bit nervous,” he said.
His nerves weren’t frayed for long.
Makanjuola, a 6-foot-9-inch, 244-pounder, made 2-of-5 field goals, 6-of-7 free throws, grabbed eight rebounds (six on the defensive end) and blocked two shots.
“I thought Yemi did a great job picking us up,” McBee said. “That’s from the work he puts in. He’s in the gym every day and you saw it tonight.”
Rashad Hannan, a 6-7 junior, paced Savannah State with 20 points and 14 rebounds. Preston Blackman had 14 points.
“I just tried to play my game and play as hard as I could,” Hassan said. “I just wanted to get this win, but unfortunately we came up short.”
Savannah State coach Horace Broadnax, who played at Georgetown on the Hoyas’ 1984 national championship team and the 1985 runners-up, said his Tigers showed a lot of grit this season.
“The season is over with for us,” he ssaid. “We were expected to finish 11th in our conference and we finished first. To win these type games, you have to exceed expectations, too, and we didn’t do that on the defensive end when we needed to do that.”
The Vols led 32-24 at halftime, but the Tigers cut their deficit to 37-35 on Blackmon’s driving layup with 13:13 left to play. Blackman was called for a charging foul on the play, but the basket counted.
Tennessee went on a 14-4 run – the Vols scored the first eight points in a span of 1 minute, 18 seconds – to open a 51-39 lead and put the Tigers in a tough spot.
But Savannah State, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference regular-season champion which was upset in the first round of the league tournament, wasn’t ready to wrap up their season.
The Tigers climbed to within 51-44 with 4:43 remaining, only to see McBee hit one of his three 3-pointers and Golden sink two free throws and push the Vols’ lead back to 56-44. McBee’s bomb at the 3:25 mark was Tennessee’s next-to-last field goal in the game.
The Vols, the SEC’s No. 2 seed who also lost to Ole Miss in the opening round of the league tournament last week in New Orleans, kept Savannah State at bay by hitting 10-of-14 free throws in the final three minutes.
For the game, Tennessee was 19 of 27 from the line. Savannah State made 6 of 14 free throws.
Tennessee made 21 of 50 field goals (42 percent) while the Tigers hit 21 of 64 (32.8 percent).
Tennessee, which had lost in the first round of its past three NIT appearances to College of Charleston (1996), Georgetown (2003) and George Mason (2004), made one field goal besides McBee’s 3 – Josh Richardson’s driving layup with 26.2 seconds left – down the stretch.
Tuesday’s victory actually snapped the Vols’ four-game NIT losing streak. They hadn’t posted an NIT victory since beating Alabama-Birmingham, 71-68, in the first round of the 1992 tournament. Tennessee is 13-11 all-time in the NIT.
Tennessee scored the game’s first 10 points and built a 22-5 lead in the game’s first five minutes.
Golden and McBee opened the scoring with 3s, Renaldo Woolridge hit a layup and Makanjuola, playing his best game since scoring 18 points and grabbing 11 rebounds against The Citadel on Dec. 29, made a layup and two free throws and the Vols had a quick 12-2 lead and looked as if they would end this one quickly.
Tennessee eventually stretched the lead to 24-7, but the Tigers had been tested early this season with tough challenges against the likes of Georgetown, Indiana, Butler, Georgia Tech and Arkansas.
Although the Tigers lost all of those games, they weren’t awestruck by Tennessee’s quick start out of the gates.
Savannah State outscored the Vols, 11-1, and pulled to within 27-20 and trailed by eight going into the second half.
And the Vols have shown they can start hot and cool off just as quickly in games this season. They shot miserably (28.1 percent) in an overtime loss to Ole Miss in last week’s SEC tournament, suffering their 15th first-round loss since 1980 and ninth since 1994.
Tennessee scored the first four points of the second half, but Savannah State went on an 11-2 run and trailed by two points. The small, partisan crowd was getting a little nervous.
“We’re going to keep battling, no matter what the score is,” McBee said. “We really didn’t even pay attention to that. We were just looking to get the win and battling as hard as we could battle.”
The Vols’ 14-4 run settled everyone down.
BOXSCORE
Tennessee 65, Savannah State 51
Savannah State (21-12)
Rashad Hassan 9-19 2-4 20, Jyles Smith 0-4 0-0 0, Preston Blackman 5-14 2-2 14, Deric Rudolph 0-5 0-0 0, Cedric Smith 0-2 0-3 0, Patrick Hendley 1-2 0-0 3, Stephen Wilson 0-0 0-0 0, Joshua Montgomery 2-8 1-2 5, Keirre Richards 0-1 0-0 0, Richard Conner 1-2 0-0 2, Arnold Louis 3-7 1-3 7. Total: 21-64 6-14 51.
Tennessee (19-14)
Jarnell Stokes 5-7 3-4 13, Yemi Makanjoula 2-5 6-7 10, Trae Golden 2-7 6-8 11, Skylar McBee 3-5 0-0 9, Cameron Tatum 1-5 2-4 4, Josh Richardson 5-9 0-1 10, Renaldo Woolridge 1-6 0-0 2, Dwight Miller 0-0 0-0 0, Jordan McRae 2-6 2-3 6. Total: 21-50 19-27 65.
Savannah State 24 27 -- 51
Tennessee 32 33 – 65
3-point goals: Savannah State 2-15 (Hassan 0-1, J.Smith 0-1, Blackman 2-2, C.Smith 0-3, Montgomery 1-2, Louis 1-3); Tennessee 4-10 (Golden 1-1, McBee 3-4, Tatum 0-1, Richardson 0-2, Woolridge 0-1).
Fouled out: Savannah State – None; Tennessee – None.
Rebounds: Savannah State 41 (Hassan 14); Tennessee 42 (Tatum 9).
Assists: Savannah State 13 (Blackman 5); Tennessee 11 (Tatum 5).
Total fouls: Savannah State 23; Tennessee 14.
Technical fouls: Savannah State – None; Tennessee – None.
Attendance: 6,289.
(E-mail Larry Fleming at fleminglrry@aol.com)