vols find groove vs. mtsu

Tennessee’s junior shooting guard JaJuan Smith said after Tuesday’s career-high 32-point performance in the Vols’ blowout of Middle Tennessee State that he knew he was in store for a big night when he woke up Tuesday morning with a sore back after spending extra hours on Monday working to break out of an early-season shooting slump.

Smith was in a zone of his own, however, in the Vols’ 109-50 triumph over the Blue Raiders Tuesday night before a crowd of 18,592 at UT’s Thompson-Boling Arena.

Smith, who played just 19 minutes in the game, actually had outscored the Middle Tennessee State team when he received his final ovation from the appreciative home crowd halfway through second half when Tennessee head coach Bruce Pearl subbed him out with the Vols up 88-28.

Pearl acknowledged that Tuesday’s performance was about as good as he could ask for from his squad but said he still felt bad for the visitors after the Vols’ 59-point onslaught.

“I feel bad about the margin,” Pearl commented after the game. “But at this point that’s about as good as you could expect from our guys.”

After Friday’s uneven effort in a win over Prairie View A&M, the Vols went to work over the next couple of days in an effort to look more like the talented ensemble they’re expected to be—or the No. 7 ranked team in the country.

Against MTSU though, the Vols didn’t look anymore like the seventh best team in America than they did in Friday’s lackluster performance against the undermanned Panthers.

Instead, they looked more like the best team in the country.

Pearl bemoaned his team’s performance in Friday’s game, saying it needed to make improvements in rebounding, three-point shooting and free throw shooting in order to be where it needs to be as the regular season matures into the all-important conference portion of the 2007/2008 grid.

Tuesday against MTSU, the Vols gave their coach more than he even asked for.

Tennessee outrebounded the Blue Raiders 31-24. Sophomore post Wayne Chism led the way on the boards with five rebounds but 11 different players pulled down at least one in the game. Prairie View outrebounded the Vols 48-43 in Friday’s game.

The Volunteers’ free throw shooting against MTSU still wasn’t quite where it needs to be to really make opponents pay, but the 19-of-28 clip was a vast improvement over Friday’s 21-of-47 performance.

Starting sophomore point guard Ramar Smith was a dismal 0-for-12 from the charity strip against Prairie View but came back and went 6-for-7 Tuesday against the Blue Raiders.

The Vols wound up tying a school record Tuesday night for the number of 3-point baskets made (16).

Led by Smith’s 7-of-11 performance from behind the arc, Tennessee connected on 16-of-28 longballs as a team.

When senior All-American Chris Lofton, who had begun the season mired in a rare shooting slump, swished two treys in a row toward the end of the first half, the noise-level from the crowd grew to as loud as it’s been since UT debuted Thompson-Boling’s restructured interior last month.

Lofton had his best night of the young season, connecting of 5-of-8 from downtown for a season-high total of 17.

Lofton, the reigning conference Player of the Year, led the SEC in scoring last year at over 20 points per game.

The Vols will try to remain at a high level Friday night (9 p.m.) in Newark, New Jersey against West Virginia. UT will play either Texas or New Mexico State Saturday afternoon (4:30 p.m.), the final day of the Legends Classic.