Tennessee Makes CBB Fans Sweat in Narrow Win vs. Louisiana in 2023 NCAA Tournament
Tennessee is headed to the second round of the men's NCAA tournament. But the Volunteers sure didn't make it easy on themselves.
The fourth-seeded Vols survived a furious Louisiana comeback attempt and held on for a 58-55 win. Tennessee led by 11 points at the half and by as many as 18 points in the second half, but Louisiana fought to make it just a three-point deficit by the end.
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Tennessee was the definition of balanced in this game, with nobody on the Volunteers scoring more than Tyreke Key's 12 points off the bench. Five Tennessee players had at least eight points in the win.
Louisiana was led by Jordan Brown's 16 points and seven boards.
This was a standard Tennessee performance. The Vols played excellent defense, held Louisiana to 6-of-18 shooting from three and forced 15 turnovers. But the offense also wasn't pretty, and college basketball fans weren't exactly singing the school's praises after the nervy win:
Tennessee likely isn't going to go on a deep run based on its offense, but on Thursday turnovers (18) and horrendous perimeter shooting (4-of-16 from three) sure didn't help the cause.
And things aren't going to get any easier, with a red-hot Duke waiting. The Blue Devils won the ACC tournament, have won 10 straight games in total and 13 of their past 15. Kyle Filipowski (15.4 PPG, 9.0 RPG) and Jeremy Roach (13.3 PPG) will give Tennessee all it can handle.
The Volunteers don't need to be excellent on offense to win, given how good their defense is. They just need to be competent and reduce the turnovers. If they can't do that, however, Duke will roll them.
