American will try to limit Vols’ pace

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Don’t go mining in the Tennessee hills.

All you’ll find is “fool’s gold,” American University basketball coach Jeff Jones warned his players.

Tennessee’s Volunteers will try to play today’s first-round NCAA tournament game like they’ve done most of the time in three seasons under coach Bruce Pearl — fast.

Jones, like most coaches opposing the Vols, has warned his players to avoid their natural instincts. He has implored them to avoid taking the fast-paced bait.

The Vols have lost just four times this season, and three of them came to Kentucky and Vanderbilt, teams that intentionally slowed Tennessee’s tempo. Butler did the same last season to the Vols, who clearly don’t prefer to grind it out.

Few teams have run with the Vols and beat them, as North Carolina did last season and Arkansas did last week. Even super-athletic Memphis has failed to outrun UT the past two seasons.

Jones and his players are well aware of that, and they want no part of it. The Eagles average scoring 65 points per game and know they must dictate tempo to hang around this afternoon in the BJCC Arena.

“We have got to be very aware of what Tennessee likes to do and the type of game they would like to play,” Jones said. “Obviously, if they’re able to get the game at the tempo that they want, that’s not good news for us. We have got to resist the temptation, because there will be opportunities.

“We have got to understand the difference between great opportunities and fool’s gold.”

American (21-11) is a polar opposite of Tennessee (29-4). The teams have virtually nothing in common other than astonishingly accurate perimeter shooting from undersized guards. Eagles juniors Derrick Mercer and Garrison Carr stand nowhere near 6 feet tall but play like giants from the perimeter. Mercer shoots 43.8 percent from behind the arc, and Carr is even better at 45.4 percent.

“You’ve got to cover him before the catch,” Pearl said of Carr.

Carr and Mercer didn’t deny the temptation to take the open looks UT tends to allow early in the shot clock. The key, they said, is being judicious with their jump-shot selection.

“It’s definitely going to be difficult to try to calm down,” Mercer said. “They’re going to be pressuring you, and as a basketball player, when somebody pressures you, the first idea is to go by them and get away from the pressure. We’re going to have to stay focused and stay calm and be composed and learn how to just handle the pressure and let them play at our pace.”

Added Carr: “We know that there’s going to be a lot of quick shot opportunities out there, and we have to decide whether those are good shots or not.

“They’re awful tempting to take, but we have to be disciplined.”

Tennessee’s task is simple: Cause chaos. Or, as senior guard JaJuan Smith put it, “make them uncomfortable.”

“We know coming into this tournament that a lot of teams are going to try to make us play their ball,” Smith said. “We’ve just got to be stronger and make teams play our ball ... and speed them up and make them do things they don’t want to do.”

Versatile forward Tyler Smith has made the Vols much more efficient in their half-court sets, but they’d usually rather bypass that option and score in transition.

“Of course we want them to play our game,” Tyler Smith said. “But at the same time, we’ve been working a lot on our half-court offense for this type of game in this type of setting.”

Lost in all the defensive lapses UT had last week was an all-around dominant performance in every offensive facet. The Vols have scored on the fastbreak and in the half-court with equal ease the past two weeks, shooting at least 52 percent from the field in four consecutive games.

“Offense isn’t ever our problem,” Tyler Smith said with a grin earlier this week. “We’re always good at that.”

But they’re especially dangerous on the run, and given the chance, the Vols probably wouldn’t mind taking some of their selection committee frustrations on the Eagles. They wanted a No. 1 seed and weren’t pleased with being bracketed as a No. 2 to overall top seed North Carolina in the Tar Heels’ home state.

American will almost surely be disciplined enough to avoid Long Beach State’s first-round fate from last season — remember 121-86? — but how well the Eagles smash the brake pedal could determine how long they stay in today’s game.

“That’s the keys — transition defense, rebounding, and just really slowing the pace of the game down and taking care of the ball,” American forward Brian Gilmore said.