No Ament.
No problem.
Tennessee overcame the loss of five-star freshman forward Nate Ament with tremendous ease Tuesday night, posting a 78-59 blowout of South Carolina in Columbia to improve to 21-9 overall and to 11-6 in Southeastern Conference contests. The No. 23 Volunteers repeatedly went inside against the Gamecocks, scoring 56 points in the paint and racking up 15 dunks.
Redshirt sophomore forward J.P. Estrella scored 22 points and grabbed seven rebounds, while senior forward Felix Okpara racked up 20 points and eight boards.
“We did what we wanted to get done, which was to establish inside,” Tennessee 11th-year coach Rick Barnes said afterward on the Vol Network. “I thought our pace was really good for the most part, as was our awareness and what we wanted to get done. We played well. We really did, and it’s a credit to our guys without Nate.
“Their prep was really good on a short notice in practice, and I’m just proud of the effort. From a mentally-focused standpoint, we were really well-connected.”
Ament was ruled out of Tuesday’s game on Monday night due to the right leg injury that he sustained in the first half of Saturday night’s 71-69 loss to visiting Alabama. Barnes said Tuesday night that he “absolutely” expects Ament to play again this season.
Tennessee led the Gamecocks wire-to-wire, grabbing its biggest lead at 72-52 on an Estrella layup with 4:10 to play. Estrella’s 22 points are the most in his career against an SEC foe, which is also the case with Okpara’s 20.
The two combined on 20-of-27 shooting from the floor.
“It was just about guys stepping up, and I felt like a ton of guys stepped up in a really big way,” Estrella said on the SEC Network. “The bigs did an amazing job just killing it on the glass. I felt like that was our main emphasis tonight, and we got the job done.
“We made a big emphasis of finishing at the rim, and the coaches did an amazing job of getting us prepared. It was nice to get a couple of dunks tonight.”
The Vols shot 54.1% for the game (33-of-61), produced a 34-23 rebounding advantage and committed only six turnovers for a second straight contest. Senior point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie only had eight points, but he racked up 12 assists to just one turnover.
“Ja’Kobi was terrific tonight with the ball,” Barnes said. “We are who we are right now in terms of the offense. We can continue to get better, obviously, in every facet of the game, but we have more of a command of what we’re trying to get done.”
Meechie Johnson scored 20 points in his final home game for South Carolina, which dropped to 12-18 overall and to 3-14 within the SEC. Johnson is wrapping up a unique college career containing two seasons at Ohio State, two at South Carolina, another one at OSU before this final year with the Gamecocks.
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Carey and Okpara combined for the game’s first six points, and a Gillespie layup at the 16:30 mark put Tennessee up 11-3 and resulted in a quicker-than-desired timeout by Lamont Paris. The Vols took their first double-digit advantage at 21-10 on a DeWayne Brown II layup with 12:01 before halftime, and they snagged their biggest lead of the half at 40-28 on an Ethan Burg 3-pointer with 40 seconds before the break.
Tennessee led 40-28 at the half, shooting 54.8% in the first 20 minutes (17-of-31) and getting 10 points and six rebounds from Okpara. The Vols got 30 of their 40 first-half points in the paint.
The Gamecocks opened the second half on a 12-6 run to pull within 46-40, getting 3-pointers from Kobe Knox, Nordin Kapic and Johnson, but the Vols had a 14-5 response, taking their largest lead to that point at 60-45 on a Burg 3-pointer with 9:56 remaining.
Tennessee will close its regular season against visiting Vanderbilt on Saturday (2 p.m. on ESPN).
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.