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Zakai Zeigler doesn’t lead Tennessee in scoring. That title belongs to fellow guard Chaz Lanier.
But Zeigler is as important a player as the Volunteers have, and he seems to be the guy who comes up with the big play, or shot, when Rick Barnes’s team needs it the most.
One of those moments happened yet again on Saturday afternoon when Zeigler and the 6th-ranked Vols were trying desperately to hold off No. 7 Texas A&M in hostile territory and on national TV. The crowd in College Station was trying to rally the Aggies to a comeback victory, but Zeigler would have none of it.
With 23 seconds left and Tennessee clinging to a 72-69 lead, the senior guard took an inbounds pass and buried a left-wing 3-pointer to give the Volunteers some needed breathing room in an eventual 77-69 victory. The breaking point in the game was Zeigler’s fearless shot, because there were only 5 seconds left on the shot clock and if he missed it and the Aggies got the rebound, they would have had a chance to creep even closer or even tie the game.
Instead, the shot went in, the Vols had a 6-point lead and the game was basically over.
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“If you gotta pass it to me, it’s going up and it’s going in, simple as that,” the ever-confident Zeigler told the ESPN announcers in a postgame interview.
Zeigler scored 16 points in the victory, well below Lanier’s game-high 30 points. And Zeigler only had 2 field goals all day on 6 shot attempts. But in true clutch Zeigler fashion, 1 of the makes was the biggest shot of the game. Zeigler added 7 assists, 2 rebounds and 2 steals, and was naturally clutch at the foul line, making 10 of 12.
Zeigler played 33 minutes. He’s seemingly always there for his team, and he was ever-present in the biggest moment of Saturday’s huge victory in the latest SEC showdown.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
