Knoxville, Tenn. – Tennessee senior guard Chaz Lanier scored a season-high 29 points in the Vols’ 76-52 win over Arkansas on Saturday. He took 20 shots, making 10, and was 5 of 9 from three-point range. In doing so, he established himself as an All-SEC caliber guard, an All-America candidate and the best player on the No. 1 team in the country.
Twenty shots is a lot, but if there is one criticism Lanier’s teammates have of him, it’s that he doesn’t shoot enough. “If Chaz [Lanier] took 30 shots a game, we would not care. It’s fun as a point guard,” Tennessee guard Zakai Ziegler said. “He’s an easy assist.”
It was one of many outstanding performances that Tennessee’s 6-foot-4 senior guard has turned in this season. He scored 26 in wins over Virginia and Syracuse and 25 in a win over Baylor. Those are eye-popping numbers for a guy who played the last four seasons at North Florida. It is reminiscent of the success Tennessee enjoyed last season from Dalton Knecht, who transferred from Northern Colorado and became SEC player of the year and a first-round NBA draft pick.
A mid-major transfer who’s a high volume shooter could be disruptive to chemistry, but as Zeigler’s comments indicate, Lanier’s teammate have embraced and encouraged him. “They want him to shoot it,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes added. “He’s a complement to his teammates. I think he would say the same thing in the fact that they’re finding and looking for each other…There’s not one selfish thing about him and they would tell you, if you’re not getting by people it’s because you’re turning down shots.”
Lanier demonstrated the killer instinct on Saturday that Barnes has longed to see from his leading scorer. He demonstrated his quick release on catch and shoot threes, drove aggressively in search of his own shot and got to the basket several times. “It’s one of the quickest I’ve been around,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said of Lanier’s release. “It’s quick. He gets rid of it. He’s hard to guard because obviously you don’t want to put a guy like that on the free throw line. It goes back to him doing his work early, getting off screens, getting his hips turned.”
The win amounted to an emphatic statement for the nation’s No. 1 ranked team. The Vols led Arkansas by as many as 27 points and owned a double digit advantage from the 5:08 mark of the first half on. Even though three of Arkansas’ rotational players stand 6-foot-10 or taller, the Razorbacks were outrebounded 51-29. Tennessee also grabbed 24 offensive rebounds that resulted in 16 points. “We only had one guy try to get an offensive rebound,” Razorbacks coach John Calipari said. “They’re the No. 1 team in the country for a reason. My disappointment wasn’t that we came here and lost. It was that they manhandled us.”
That could be a common refrain from Tennessee’s opponents this season. Arkansas was held to a season-low 52 points on Saturday while shooting just 37.7% from the field and 20.7% from 3-point range. “We gotta do some soul searching,” Calipari said. “Aren’t you like ‘how did you only get beat by 25?’ It could’ve been 50.”
