Santi took over the huddle for a moment — Rick Barnes explains how that happened.
If you were watching closely on Saturday night in Tuscaloosa, you saw a little bit of a strange scene in the Tennessee huddle. Senior guard Santiago Vescovi took over the grease board, and was seemingly drawing up a play with the team listening. Head coach Rick Barnes was sitting beside him, watching it all happen.
Barnes went in depth on the moment during ‘Vol Calls’ on Tuesday night.
Coach Barnes was asked on about Santiago Vescovi’s leadership in the huddle on Saturday night.
Listen here. pic.twitter.com/M3JUqDAf2R
— Vol Network (@VolNetwork) March 5, 2024
“What I love about that, Santi, I looked at him, I said, ‘what are you thinking?’ And the play that we wanted, we ended up going, he wanted to make sure that Tobe knew exactly where he had to be because he could, (and) I could, when we called the play we looked at Tobe and we could tell he was like not quite as sure as we want it to be,” Barnes said on Tuesday. “And Santi just took it and said, you’ve gotta do this right here. Which I think it’s great when players do that. And I’ve always said, when you got a team that’s led by players, that’s when you got a chance to be good.”
Tennessee has been leaning on that super-senior leadership down the stretch this season, going 8-1 since the month of February began. Josiah-Jordan James and Santiago Vescovi have taken a backseat to likely SEC Player of the Year Dalton Knecht, but they have seemingly settled into a nice groove at the right time of year.
All of this experience paired with the elite scoring ability of Knecht is a fun combination to think about entering tournament season. It feels like Tennessee’s best shot to make some real noise since the Grant Williams/Admiral Schofield days.
Tennessee will go for the SEC regular season title tonight at South Carolina, with tip-off set for 7 p.m. ET. ESPN2 will have the coverage.