Wednesday night marked Dalton Knecht's next-to-last performance inside the Food City Center.
What a bar he set for the regular-season finale against Kentucky on March 9.
Knecht's 39 points propelled No. 4 Tennessee to a thrilling 92-84 comeback victory over No. 11 Auburn in a monster Southeastern Conference matchup for both programs. The 6-foot-5, 213-pound graduate transfer from Northern Colorado racked up 25 of his points in the final 12:01 of game clock, outscoring Auburn's entire team 25-21 in the process.
"What he did in the last 12 minutes is one of the great performances I've been able to see," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes, who notched his 801st career win at the expense of Bruce Pearl's Tigers, said Wednesday night in a news conference. "We were just spacing out and trying to give him room to operate."
Knecht is the only Division I men's basketball player this season with four performances of 35 or more points, having amassed 37 during the Volunteers' loss at North Carolina in late November and having compiled 36 and 39 in consecutive mid-January wins over Georgia and Florida.
His four career games of 35 or more points in four months have only been topped by three players in Vols history: Bernard King's 11, Ernie Grunfeld's eight and Allan Houston's six. Grunfeld and Houston each had four seasons to tally their totals, while King had three.
Adding to Wednesday night's amazement was the fact Auburn arrived with a statistical top-five defense nationally.
"He was really hard to stop," Pearl said. "He made a lot of tough shots and a lot of shots that were contested. I'm disappointed that there were times when we could have offered more resistance or help off the ball and didn't, but at the end of the day, you've just got to tip your hat."
Given that Knecht's hometown of Thornton, Colorado, is hardly a basketball mecca, and given that he was a complete unknown who began his career at Northeastern (Colorado) Junior College before transferring to a Big Sky program, there is certainly a humble side to Tennessee's one-year star. Either that, or he seems just as bewildered as everybody else with how this winter has transpired.
When asked what it felt like having such a showing, Knecht said: "I don't know. The basket just feels a lot bigger. My teammates just kept getting me the ball and told me to keep shooting it."
Junior point guard Zakai Zeigler was sitting next to Knecht in the news conference and quickly added: "I see this every day. It's just DK being DK."
The best perspective to Knecht's tenure at Tennessee may have been provided by Pearl, who coached the Vols for six seasons. Pearl is in his 10th year at Auburn, with his 2019 team having reached the NCAA Final Four after finishing fifth in the SEC regular season and with his 2022 team having reached No. 1 in the country before eventually losing badly in the round of 32.
"With his size and the versatility there, I can't think of anybody quite like him," Pearl said. "If they can make a run, he'll be talked about for a long time."
Voting strategy
Pearl was asked whether Wednesday night cemented his voting for Knecht as SEC player of the year.
"What I've always done is vote for the best player on the best team," Pearl said. "If Tennessee wins the league, he'll get my vote for sure. If Alabama wins the league, I'm going to vote for Mark Sears."
One year ago
Zeigler had 17 points and nine assists against Auburn, with Wednesday marking the 1-year anniversary of his torn anterior cruciate ligament suffered in the early stages of a win over Arkansas in Knoxville. The 5-9, 171-pounder has played in all 28 games this season, competing for 40 minutes at Texas A&M, 39 against North Carolina State, and 38 at Georgia and again Wednesday.
"God is great. That's all I can really say," Zeigler said. "It was tough last year going down, but I fought through adversity, and the people around me just picked me up."
Baseball changes
Tennessee has announced that the starting times for baseball games Friday and Saturday against Bowling Green inside Lindsey Nelson Stadium have been moved into the afternoon due to expected cold temperatures.
Friday's opener will now start at 4:30, with Saturday's game now set for 5. Sunday afternoon's finale remains at 1.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.