AUBURN, Ala. – Cameron Tatum got a text message Thursday morning from Scotty Hopson, his absent teammate back in Knoxville.
“He sent me a text this morning just saying, ‘Go out there and play your game,'” the Tennessee junior wing said after getting 15 points and seven rebounds in the Volunteers’ 69-56 Southeastern Conference basketball win over Auburn at the newly built Auburn Arena.
Hopson, UT’s leading scorer at 16.5 points per game, didn’t travel with the Vols (15-7, 5-2) after spraining his ankle during practice Tuesday.
“He sent a text to the whole team just to step up in his absence,” said Tatum, who made five of 10 shots and added three steals. “That’s what a leader does. Whenever your leader’s down he continues to lead, and he continues to support and encourage everybody to do what they’re supposed to do. I think everybody took that to heart and everybody had his back, so we kind of [won] this for Hop.”
The Vols, also playing their seventh game without head coach Bruce Pearl as he nears the end of his SEC suspension, didn’t look like they needed Hopson against the undermanned Tigers (8-14, 1-7).
“People always second-guess why Coach [has] got so many bench players and why we’ve got so many players on the team, and this is the perfect example,” said center Brian Williams, who had 15 points and eight rebounds.
“When somebody’s injured, somebody’s always got to step up, and that’s what we did.”
UT jumped out to a 19-6 lead with dominating inside play. The Vols grabbed the game’s first 10 rebounds, held a 21-7 advantage on the glass going into halftime and outrebounded the Tigers 38-24 for the game.
Auburn, coming off its first league win at South Carolina last Saturday, suspended Rob Chubb, its starting center and tallest player at 6-foot-10, before the game for violation of team rules.
Four of Williams’ first five rebounds were offensive, and he did all his scoring in the first half. The Vols pushed the lead to 22 in the second half.
“Brian’s been playing great of late,” Tatum said. “We understood they’d be kind of weak on the inside, especially getting into their bench, so Brian, the way he’s playing and what confidence he’s playing with, get him going early and he can help carry us.”
Freshman forward Tobias Harris showed little effects of the ankle he sprained in UT’s win at Ole Miss last Saturday, scoring 14 points with five rebounds in 25 minutes. Josh Bone started in Hopson’s place and scored eight points with two 3-pointers.
“This is SEC play. You can’t take a night off no matter who you’re playing,” Williams said. “I think we’ve been playing great as of late, and we haven’t taken any nights off.”