Maybe Chaz Lanier just does better against non-conference opponents. Before SEC play, the Tennessee guard looked like a potential Player of the Year, but once he started facing league foes, he was wilting beneath the pressure. Well, March Madness is here, and all of a sudden, he’s back.
In his first ever NCAA Tournament game, Lanier shot 6-of-13 from three, tying a school record for makes from beyond the arc in the Big Dance, and scored 29 points as the Vols beat the Wofford Terriers 77-62. Lanier scored from everywhere on the court, going 11-of-22 overall.
Sure, it was against Wofford, but you can’t really accuse somebody of not being clutch when they rise to the occasion like that in their first March Madness outing. Tennessee’s perimeter defense didn’t show up like it usually does, so Lanier literally had to shoot the Vols to victory, and boy did he ever.
This is a far cry from what Tennessee got from him during its SEC schedule. Lanier missed a free throw at the end to cost UT against the Vanderbilt Commodores, he took himself out of the Vols’ first loss to the Kentucky Wildcats, and at one point Rick Barnes benched him because he refused to shoot on a play designed for him to score.
What scoring guard passes up an opportunity to score when their number is called? All of this compounded with Tennessee’s regular season loss to the Auburn Tigers on the road, where Barnes called the game-winning shot for Zakai Zeigler and not Lanier. I wrote of Lanier then as not mentally tough.
However, later in the year, he was starting to find his groove again. Steve Hamer came on our show and brought up a reasonable point. Lanier may have not been as prepared for SEC play early. This is the toughest league in history, and the Vols’ non-conference schedule ended up relatively weak since so many teams finished worse than they were projected.
Perhaps all he needed was time to adjust. Indeed, Lanier has been much more aggressive shooting the ball recently, even if the shots aren’t falling. Barnes has been calling for that all year. There’s a reason he’s now two threes short of Chris Lofton’s single-season three-point record at UT.
If the Vols are going to make a deep run in March Madness, Lanier needs to be shooting 20 or more shots a game like he did in this one. He’s capable of staying hot given what he showed throughout the season. Maybe he was just saving his energy early to go off now. What’s clear, though, is he’s back, and he once again looks like an NBA prospect.
