Josiah-Jordan James says Tennessee learned from last year’s early exit from March Madness
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Tennessee’s 2020-21 campaign ended in disappointment last year when No. 12-seed Oregon State took down the No. 5-seed Volunteers in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Rick Barnes’ squad returned to the same court in Indianapolis for Thursday’s opening-round clash with No. 14-seed Longwood. The Vols were determined to avoid another early exit.
UT controlled much of Thursday’s game, leading by as many as 36 points en route to an 88-56 victory. Josiah-Jordan James pointed to last year when asked how the Vols avoided a slow start against Longwood (via 247Sports).
Q. A lot of times in those opening rounds, you see teams be a little sluggish out of the game and you, a team that doesn’t have a lot of NCAA experience, were locked in from the start. What do you attribute that to?
JOSIAH-JORDAN JAMES: I feel like learning from what happened last year. We were one of those teams who just thought things were going to happen. We weren’t really playing desperate.
We just talked this week leading up to this game, being the more desperate team and knowing that every team in this tournament is a championship team, and so you can’t take anything for granted. I felt like we did a good job in preparing for that.
James was UT’s second-leading scorer on Thursday with 17 points, behind 18 from Santiago Vescovi. James was one rebound short of a double-double, recording a team-leading 9 boards in the win over Longwood.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
