KNOXVILLE-Tennessee shooting guard Scotty Hopson was all smiles Wednesday night. Scoring 23 points and throwing down three monster dunks in a 73-67 victory over South Carolina will do that for a guy.
“I just wanted to stay in an attack mode,” said the Vols’ leading scorer in both this win and on the season. “We’ve got to start treating every game like it’s our last. We feed off energy, and I wanted to bring the energy tonight.”
Had they lost this one it could have creative an overwhelming amount of negative energy for the final five regular-season games of one of the strangest seasons in school history.
A loss would have given UT three home SEC defeats and dropped them to 5-6 in league play. A loss would have begun to cast serious doubt on whether or not the Big Orange would even make the NCAA Tournament.
And against any SEC East squad save the Gamecocks, UT might have indeed come up short.