By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
December 4, 1996
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – In 16 previous meetings against its bigger brothers in Knoxville, the Tennessee Tech men's basketball team had come up empty.
Across 57 seasons, the Golden Eagles had gotten close to knocking off Tennessee, including a 69-62 loss in 1949 and a 65-62 defeat in the first round of the 1985 National Invitation Tournament in the friendly confines of the Hooper Eblen Center.
"If you look back, we had played Tennessee nearly every year for a stretch between 1992 and 1997," said Tech associate athletics director for sports/compliance Frank Harrell, who was the coach of the Golden Eagle men's team between 1988 and 1998. "Several times, with about five or six minutes to go, we were in position and were really competitive. You had to have a lead because you weren't going to get the calls with all of those screaming fans."
In the 1996-97 season, Tech found its lead. With the starting five of Curtis Wiggins, Ryan Black, Lorenzo Coleman, Chris Turner and Marc Glanton, the Golden Eagles walked into Thompson-Boling Arena on that early December night and came away with a statement win, defeating the Volunteers 73-62.
The Vols, under the direction of Kevin O'Neill in his final season there before taking over Northwestern for three years, Arizona for one and USC for four, started the season with an 85-63 win over Morehead State, then toppled Georgia State 70-53 before bringing in Tech for the third and final game of the season-opening homestand.
Tech, meanwhile, had won its first three games of the year, leaving Clinch Valley (109-56) and Cumberland (92-52) in the dust, then taking a 72-60 road win at Northwestern.
"By the time we played that game, Lorenzo had gotten so much better and when we played SEC teams, ACC teams, they called him different," Harrell said. "They let him play a little more, they let him bump around a little more because he was playing against someone close to his size. When he was in the OVC in those days, Lorenzo was much bigger and it'd be like he elbowed someone in the back of their head when he was just posting up.
"Tennessee guarded us different. They actually double-teamed off Curtis to Lorenzo and Curtis was a better scorer than Lorenzo. He was just 6-4 and was a natural low-post that I had to play at high-post. When I saw they were double-teaming, as soon as we got the ball inward to Lorenzo, we slid Curtis down low because that's who they were doubling off of and we took the wing away from the other side. It was just a field day for Curtis. At best some other wing was trying to come down to help him and he was just a great, great scorer on his own."
Wiggins ended the game with 22 points and 13 rebounds, while Coleman finished with 12 boards, 13 points and seven blocks – three deflections shy of a triple-double. Turner also chipped in with 15 points to round out the Tech leaders. The Golden Eagles shot 25-for-51 (49 percent) from the field, 4-for-12 (33.3 percent) from beyond the arc and 19-of-25 (76 percent) at the line.
As the game started, Tennessee had the early momentum, but couldn't get more than a three-point, 8-5 lead in the first four minutes, then 12-9 at 13:52 as Scott Moore drained a jumper at the line.
In just under three minutes, Lorenzo Coleman put the Golden Eagles on his shoulders and the momentum back on their side.
A foul on Charles Hathaway put Coleman at the line and the Tech standout knocked down both shots to make it a 12-11 game in favor of the home Vols. Coleman then gave Tech the 14-12 lead at 13:02 on a hook shot along the right baseline and a 16-14 advantage with another bucket just before the 12-minute media timeout.
In that span, he scored six of Tech's nine points as the Golden Eagles held the Vols to four.
The Golden Eagles didn't trail the rest of the half, taking a 35-30 advantage into the locker room. Wiggins led Tech in scoring in the first half with 10 points on 3-of-4 field goals and 4-for-4 at the stripe, while also collecting. Coleman added three more points for nine at the intermission, but more enticing was his four blocks.
Brandon Wharton was the only double-digit scorer for Tennessee in the opening 20, collecting 10 points on 5-for-10 shooting.
Tech also utilized the free-throw line well in the first half, going 12-for-13 at the line – Coleman going 5-for-5.
The Golden Eagle advantage disappeared by the first media timeout, however, as Hathaway hit a layup, Cornelius Jackson knocked down a three and Wharton collected two jumpers with Tennessee outscoring Tech 11-7 in the first 4:47 to make it 42-41 Golden Eagles with 15:13 remaining in the contest.
DaShay Jones gave the Vols the 43-42 lead at 14:48 on a jumper along the right baseline, then it see-sawed as Wiggins hit a layup on the left side, C.J. Black put in a layup, then Tech's Jason Embry made it 47-45 Tech with a trey in the left corner, only for Black to tie it with a layup at 12:16. Turner added a jumper along the left baseline, then Aaron Green gave the Vols their final lead of the contest at 11:46 with a three-pointer – 50-49.
"We had a little bit of a lead with five minutes or so to go in the game and they called time out," Harrell said. "They had a good left-handed player – Brandon Wharton – and he was a really good scorer. I said in the huddle, 'You know they're going to go to Brandon every play.' Ryan Black said, 'Tell everybody not to switch, don't help too much to get in my way and he will not touch the ball again.'
"Ryan just shut him down. Normally where we would have helped on a screen or switched a screen, Ryan said he could get through the screens, he's not going to come off the screens shooting, so we changed our defense so Ryan could take him one-on-one."
Following the media timeout at 11:34, Turner knocked down a three from the key, sparking a 24-12 outburst over the remainder of the contest. The Vols were able to cut the deficit back down to one three times, the final at 56-55 with 6:33 left. Tech responded to that with a 7-0 run on an Albert Wilson 3-pointer and jumper combined with a Wiggins jumper.
"Albert Wilson hit a three, then a jump shot, then, in the last three or four possessions, we held the ball," Harrell said. "We didn't intend to. We knew we had to keep scoring, but we couldn't get a good shot. At the end of the possession, Albert went one-on-one and hit a couple of big baskets. After the game, everyone said, 'Man, what great coaching to hold the ball to the end.' It wasn't – we just wanted a great shot, but Albert knocked those shots down."
After Jones added a pair of free throws to make it 63-57, Tech added five more points on two more Wiggins buckets and a Black free throw – 68-57 Golden Eagles. The Vols ended a nearly five-minute field goal drought with a Green 3-pointer with 41 seconds left, but Tennessee hit just one more shot in the waning seconds of the game, with Tech going 6-for-8 at the charity stripe in the final 68 seconds to put the game well out of reach.
The Golden Eagles turned the ball over 22 times, leading to 16 Volunteer points.
Wharton led the Vols with 16 points, while Jones was the only other double-digit scorer with 11. Tennessee shot 25-for-61 (41 percent) from the field, 3-for-10 (30 percent) from 3-point range and 9-for-19 at the line.
"A couple of years later, they wouldn't play us," Harrell joked. "We had lost Lorenzo, we lost a bunch of those guys, so I thought they'd be thrilled to have us back."
Tech played Tennessee again in 1997, falling 83-69, but only appeared on the Volunteers' schedule three times in the first decade of the new millennium – appearing in Thompson-Boling in 2001, 2003 and 2006, before making four appearances in the 2010s in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019.
"(Coach O'Neill) was very complimentary of us," Harrell said. "Really, we played better against those kinds of teams that year because they'd let Lorenzo play as a 7-footer, 280-pounder. It was a different story in league play, so it was tough on us."
Coleman was a diamond-in-the-rough for the Golden Eagles. From his humble beginnings, not many would figure he'd become a two-time Tech scoring leader, the 12th-leading scorer in program history with 1,365 points, a three-time single-season rebound leader, second in career rebounds with 1,001, as well as a four-time blocks champ and leading the career mark by a wide margin with 436. Daniel Northern with 184 stands in second.
"The first year Lorenzo started in high school was as a senior," Harrell said. "I think he only started playing as a junior. When we signed him, no one offered him. He always had a knack for blocking shots. As a freshman, we just kind of pitched him in and threw him and worked with him, and by the time he was a junior and senior, he was pretty effective at blocking shots. He's a lot like Bill Russell – he didn't block it into the stands, he just put his hand up and pushed the ball up. Most of the time when he blocked it, we got possession of it. Now, Lorenzo also made a few turnovers – four or five for a post is a lot.
Harrell joked, "But his story didn't end here. When he went and played in the overseas leagues, he was going to lead the leagues in blocks, be a great rebounder and probably be close to the league lead in turnovers. Part of that, bless his heart, was – and I used to tell our players this – if you didn't hit Lorenzo between the shoulders, it's your turnover because he didn't move his hands fast enough.
"We did all kinds of drills – we threw tennis balls at him – just trying to get him to learn things. He was just big ol' arms and his arms were slow, but he really developed."
Wins happen against the power conference teams every so often, but for the fans, for the Tech community, beating the Volunteers was special.
"The UT win was big for us because it was UT," Harrell said. "At the same time, we had beaten Auburn (12/21/1989, 72-70) and Vanderbilt (11/29/1989, 89-76), we beat Southern Mississippi when they were really good and ranked in the Top 25 (12/6/1990, 84-76; 12/22/92, 102-98). But because it was UT and what people think of it, that win was huge.
"It ranks No. 1 for our fans because they just caught on to it. Now for me, it's down the line. I think our win against Western Kentucky (12/5/1992, 99-92) here when they were here and ranked in the Top 20, then the win over Southern Mississippi when they were 15th (12/6/1990) with Clarence Weatherspoon on that team. They were bigger wins to me because they were better teams than Tennessee, but with what Tennessee means to them, it stands out. There was nothing like the excitement from the UT game."
