Tennessee Volunteers guard Zakai Zeigler has directed his team to getting one step away from the school’s first-ever Final Four bid. / Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images

INDIANAPOLIS—Tennessee alum and diehard fan Peyton Manning was in familiar territory Friday night to watch his Volunteers: Lucas Oil Stadium, home to the Indianapolis Colts. He witnessed a quarterbacking performance he could be proud of … on the hardwood. 

Volunteers point guard Zakai Zeigler commanded the game from the opening minute like an elite field general, marching his team up and down the court with total control … albeit with a lot more speed than Manning ever displayed on this field. For 40 minutes, it was a dazzling display of sharp passing, fearless scoring and tenacious on-ball defense, a master class at the position from one of the sport’s most experienced players in the Vols’ 78-65 victory. 

“He does it on both ends at an elite level,” senior Jahmai Mashack says. “I don’t know what else you could do in order for him to be the best point guard in the country.”

Tennessee entered the Midwest Regional with revenge on its mind, taking on a Kentucky Wildcats team that had beaten it twice in the regular season. There was a feeling throughout the Vols locker room that the Wildcats hadn’t seen their best yet and some bitterness over losing twice to one of Tennessee’s biggest rivals in an otherwise-sparkling season in Knoxville, Tenn. After one of the team’s practices this week leading up to the rematch, Zeigler and fellow senior Mashack held the huddle long. The message: This can’t happen again. And the Vols star point guard made sure of it with his play from the jump. 

“We wanted to set the tone and show them who we are,” Zeigler said. “We knew regardless of what had happened, we were going to go out and play Tennessee basketball on the offensive and defensive end, and I feel like we did that great tonight.”

Five minutes in, Zeigler nailed his first three of the game, a wide-open corner trey out of the game’s first media timeout. As he ran back down the floor, he looked to the Kentucky fan section with a slight smirk. If smiles could talk, that one said, “Not today.” Then there was the remarkable lob pass to Felix Okpara for a loud finish around five game minutes later, followed not too much later by blurring Koby Brea for a smooth layin that stretched Tennessee’s early lead to 15. Whatever he wanted, he got.

“If we have a leader like that, when [he’s playing] like that, it’s really hard to lose,” forward Igor Milicic Jr. says. 

The scoring was largely shut off by Kentucky in the second half, but that did nothing to slow Zeigler’s complete domination of the game. Instead, he picked apart the Wildcats defense with his passing, dishing out six dimes in the game’s final 20 minutes to keep Kentucky at arm’s length. Tennessee went into halftime with a 15-point lead, and the largely pro-Kentucky crowd attempted to will the Wildcats back into the game with every basket. But thousands of raucous Kentucky fans were regularly stifled by Zeigler and the Vols offense and their ability to deliver one key response after another.

“There are really good point guards out there, they’re really good at controlling the game,” Mashack says. “But the way Z does it, the way he guards, gets through screens and controls the game offensively … it’s levels [different].”

The sequence that most encapsulated the Tennessee effort came with just over 10 minutes to go in the game. Naturally, Zeigler was in the thick of it. With Kentucky back within 12, fellow backcourt star Chaz Lanier drove to the rim and missed, going down hard underneath the basket. But Okpara was in the right place at the right time to put it back in, then Lanier sprung up and managed to tip the Kentucky outlet pass as the Wildcats looked to break the other way. The ball fell right to Zeigler, who drilled a triple that gave Tennessee a 17-point lead that suddenly felt insurmountable again. 

“That was just insane,” Milicic said. “That was the nail in the coffin.” 

The final line for the Vols’ decorated point guard: 18 points, 10 assists, just two turnovers … with one in the closing minutes and the game well out of reach. And the dominant display moved Zeigler one step closer to delivering the biggest program milestone yet in a career full of them—Tennessee’s first-ever trip to the Final Four. The Vols inched closer each season under Zeigler, reaching the second round in his first season, the Sweet 16 in his sophomore year and suffering a gut-wrenching Elite Eight loss to the Purdue Boilermakers last year. Now, he gets a chance at Elite Eight revenge Sunday and an elusive trip to San Antonio. Even if he can’t deliver the long-awaited breakthrough, performances like Friday’s should clearly illustrate Zeigler’s impact as one of the best floor generals anywhere. 

“He’s the best point guard Tennessee has ever had,” assistant coach Rod Clark says.