Tennessee Basketball: Santiago Vescovi gives me hope for the future

SEC play started for the Tennessee Volunteers basketball team, and the Vols lost its opener to LSU, but Santiago Vescovi gives me hope for the future.

The Tennessee Volunteers basketball team started SEC play at home on Saturday and lost its opener to LSU 78-64.

I was expecting it to be a blowout, so to see the Vols compete like they did through most of the game was a nice surprise to me, but it wasn’t enough to get the win.

The offense still wasn’t great, but it was much improved from what the offensive performance was in its last few non-conference games of the season.

Tennessee shot 40% from the field and 50% from three, which is actually not terrible. Part of that came thanks to Santiago Vescovi, scoring 18 points and shooting 6-for-13 from the field.

Vescovi tied for the most points by a Vol with Yves Pons, who also finished the game with 18 points. One more big offensive performance for the Vols and Tennessee might’ve been able to win the game.

Going into the game, I was expecting a blowout and for Tennessee to win maybe two SEC games this year after its performances throughout December.

I might be wrong about that, but there’s a lot of work still to do, but maybe not as much as I initially thought.

I think the future will be bright if Vescovi can continue to bring offense to the team because other players responded and started knocking down shots too.

Vescovi played like a four-star for the most part, but there are more positives than negatives that you can take from his first game in a Tennessee uniform.

Nine turnovers in a game is an issue, but that can be fixed, and when he continues to gain experience, but that will take time.

If turnovers are going to be all we worry about for Vescovi, then that is a good problem to have. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I like where we’re currently at with Vescovi after seeing where we were during non-conference play.