Tennessee 7-foot-1 senior forward Uros Plavsic played the game of his career last month against Kentucky.
Is the sequel set for Saturday afternoon?
The former Hamilton Heights standout logged more than 26 minutes on Jan. 14 in the Volunteers’ 63-56 upset loss to the Wildcats inside Thompson-Boling Arena, racking up 19 points on 9-of-11 shooting. Plavsic dueled Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe down low and actually outscored the reigning Wooden Award winner, but Tshiebwe’s performance contained a more complete 15 points and 13 rebounds.
Wildcats coach John Calipari admitted afterward that the objective was to frustrate the Vols on the perimeter and sacrifice points to Plavsic, whose minutes against Kentucky essentially match those of his past three games combined.
“We’ve talked all year about consistency, and it’s not just on one side of the ball,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Friday on a Zoom call. “We feel confident with Uros, Olivier (Nkamhoua), Jonas (Aidoo) and Tobe (Awaka), and we go into every game knowing we’re going to need every one of those guys. Night to night, some guys might not have what they like to have and what we need them to have, and we’ll go to the next guy.