No. 19 Tennessee will play its final nonconference matchup Tuesday night before Southeastern Conference play begins when it faces struggling South Carolina State in Knoxville, Tenn.
After suffering consecutive losses to Kansas, Syracuse and then-No. 14 Illinois on Dec. 6, the Volunteers (9-3) rebounded 10 days later with arguably their most complete win of the campaign, an 83-62 throttling of then-No. 11 Louisville.
In its last outing on Dec. 21, Tennessee walloped Gardner-Webb 94-52 to improve to 7-0 on its rowdy Rocky Top home court.
One player who stood out to coach Rick Barnes in the victory over the Big South team and who may see more playing time was Clarence Massamba, a freshman from Paris who logged a season-high 14 minutes.
The 6-foot-5 Massamba’s numbers are not staggering overall: He has four points, two rebounds and three assists over 31 minutes in seven games. However, Barnes said he likes the potential he sees and that Massamba brings an energy and effort that remind him of another French-speaking former orange-clad player he coached.
“He’s the one guy that, and I’ve said it to you guys before, that personally I felt like I had to get him out there more,” Barnes said. “From the time he got here in the fall, he reminds me a lot of Yves Pons (who went on to play in the NBA in 2021-22) in the fact that he’s so driven. He never complains about anything. He’s just all about ‘What do I have to do to get better?’
“He just goes at it, maybe harder than anybody on the team. When you’ve got a guy like that, there’s something in your gut that says, ‘We’ve got to give him a chance to get out there.'”
Guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie leads the club in two categories, scoring (17.6 points per game) and assists (5.7) while shooting 34.7% from long range. True freshman Nate Ament averages 15.3 ppg and a team-high 6.9 rebounds, and big man J.P. Estrella adds 10.4 points and 4.5 rebounds.
Barnes will take his crew to Arkansas to kick off SEC action Saturday against the Razorbacks after the South Carolina State game.
Off to a miserable start, the Bulldogs (1-13) were given a holiday gift by having NAIA member Brewton-Parker on their schedule Dec. 19. They unwrapped that matchup for their lone victory this season, 68-54 behind game highs of 16 points and nine rebounds from 6-foot-10 forward Cameron Clark.
That has been the high point of the season for South Carolina State, which shared the regular-season Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference title last season with an 11-3 record. However, the Bulldogs lost a boatload of production and have just two scorers who average in double figures — Owen Bronston Jr. and Jayden Johnson.
A junior from Fairfield, Ohio, in his first season playing at the Orangeburg, S.C., school, Bronston averages 11.7 points on 39.6% shooting from the floor.
Johnson, a sophomore from Brooklyn in his second season for the Bulldogs, averages 10.1 ppg, doubling his output from his freshman season, and leads with 3.7 assists. The 6-foot-1 guard was chosen as the Preseason MEAC Player of the Year.
