Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes explains Santiago Vescovi's clipboard moment against Alabama

Yes, and I love it," Barnes said.  " What I love about that, Santi, I looked at him and said, 'What are you thinking?' And he played it. He wanted to make sure that Tobe knew exactly where he had to be because he could - I could - when we called the play, we looked at Tobe and we could tell he was not quite as sure as we wanted [him] to be. 

"Santi just took it said, 'you've got to do this right here', which I think is great when players do that. And I've always said when you got to a team is led by players. That's when you've got a chance to be good."

Tennessee big man J.P. Estrella said Vescovi being involved in planning is nothing new - although he thinks it's the first time he's seen him use the board.  

"That's the first time he's drawn it up, but he talks about what to do all the time in plays. Saying, 'coach, hey, let's do this.' He'll draw it up.  Seeing Santi do that, it was awesome.  Just watching it happen, and coach was totally okay with it because Santi knows what he's doing being here five years.  He probably still remembers the plays that he ran as a freshman, and he does it like that.  It was so sick to watch and seeing how coach was totally locked in on it, saying 'yeah, do that.'  And we executed it, and it was just super sick."

So did the play work?  Barnes said it did, although the shot didn't go down. 

"Well, we ran it. We didn't score out of it. But first look that we were trying to get, we didn't get it because they defended it well.  We went to got to the second option, got a great look at it.  Didn't make the shot, but we executed it."

Vescovi and Josiah-Jordan James are the elder statesmen on the roster, with their freshman years going back to the 2019-2020 season.  Both have earned the respect and trust of their head coach, who cites their familiarity with and understanding of both Barnes and the system as a reason for them being able to be coaches on the floor. 

"Well, they know our system so well. And to be quite frank, they know me better than anybody. And we've been together a lot, and I'm going to miss so much of those guys. I mean, they just, I think they know what I'm thinking probably sometimes more than I do.  Between the three of us, we can bring back things that we did five years ago, and they will say this, that or whatever. But they're just honestly - they're both like coaches on the floor. And they just understand, again, how we're trying to play, and we talk about them to be able to fix this or fix that. I mean, you can do a lot with them just communicating in the flow of the game, just saying this or saying that and they see it, they get it, and they've helped all of our guys this year with that.  They have the last couple of years and that's something that's going to be really hard to replace when they leave."

While the attention from many fans and members of the media have gone to Dalton Knecht this season - and understandably so with the year the sure fire first-team All-American is having - the importance of having experienced and savvy players who know how to read both their head coach and their teammates is invaluable.  Being able to see things from opponents that a lesser experienced player might not be able to see is also of great asset.

And if Tennessee makes it to Phoenix this year for the Final Four, you can bet that the most tenured Vols will have had something very big to do with that.