Zakai Zeigler eager to finish his March Madness tenure getting the Vols to their 1st Final Four

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Zakai Zeigler eager to finish his March Madness tenure getting the Vols to their 1st Final Four

2025-03-18 21:10 Last Updated At：23:41

Zakai Zeigler has one overriding goal for his final season with the Tennessee Volunteers, and that is making sure they accomplish something this program has never done.

Reach their first Final Four.

The Volunteers (27-7) have a lengthy NCAA Tournament history with this their 27th berth. They went five weeks during the regular season as the No. 1 team in the country and reached their fourth Southeastern Conference Tournament final in seven seasons. Now sights are set on finishing a very good season the best way possible.

“Winning. Winning," Zeigler said. “We understand what is in front of us and what's in line. My last year? I want to go out with a bang.”

Zeigler has been through so much on and off the court since arriving in Knoxville in August 2021. He is the SEC coaches’ two-time defensive player of the year and two-time all-SEC player who set the program record for assists in a single season during the SEC tourney. He now sits one from tying the school’s career mark at 715.

Yet, the 2022 SEC Tournament championship and 2024 SEC regular season title are the biggest trophies he has helped Tennessee win.

Tennessee was ousted in the second round of the 2022 tournament. Zeigler missed the run to the Sweet 16 in 2023 after tearing his left ACL late in the regular season, and the Vols fell as the No. 2 seed to Purdue in the Elite Eight last March.

Now a senior, he's the point guard who runs the show for coach Rick Barnes. The coach with 833 career victories said he has the utmost respect for Zeigler. Barnes knows Zeigler's body language so well and the point guard has his trust so much that the coach sometimes doesn't have to say anything at all.

Barnes only wishes he could bottle how Zeigler approaches each day.

“I love going to practice, but I don’t think I have to raise my voice very much with him because he’s a guy self-motivated, has got a tremendous drive to get better,” Barnes said. “What he's done in his career, I think he’ll leave here as one of the all-time great Tennessee Volunteers and really a guy that has impacted college basketball the past four years.”

The guard from New York, has stuck around Tennessee thanks to seeing just how fans support their Volunteers personally. During his freshman season, his mother Charmane lost everything when their apartment building in Queens burned Feb. 26, 2022. University officials helped arrange a GoFundMe with fans blowing past the $50,000 goal and raising $363,027 in less than a day before being closed.

His mother, who also takes care of a special needs nephew, moved to Knoxville that summer. Zeigler said then that they were “absolutely blown away” by the outpouring of support.

Zeigler kept working. At 5-foot-9, he is the shortest Volunteer on scholarship since 5-7 Ralph Parton in 1979-80. Zeigler's defensive skills and ability to find teammates is helped by his long armspan. He added 24 pounds and now has a standing vertical jump that has improved 4.23 inches since getting to Knoxville.

“I know he’s been an inspiration for a lot of small guards,” Barnes said. “I mean there’s lot of guards out there, small guys, that contact us because they see what he’s done and know we believe in guys like that.”

Opposing coaches know these Vols go as Zeigler goes. Alabama failed to take advantage of Zeigler being on the bench with two fouls for 10 minutes of the first half of a buzzer-beating loss March 1. Alabama coach Nate Oats said of Zeigler: “He’s the only guy that really creates a lot of offense for them.”

Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington saw Zeigler score 22 points rallying Tennessee to a win Feb. 15. Nothing his Commodores could do stopped Zeigler from controlling both the game and the pace of play.

“He's great in space,” Byington said. “He’s great in decision-making, and we tried multiple things to be able stop him. And we couldn’t come up with it."

Zeigler also need only glance at his mother in the stands to see how he's doing in games. She's always encouraged him to play mad, especially when her son isn't playing his best. Zeigler knows that means to step up his emotions, play more aggressively and cover his approach with a smile.

Now the No. 2 seeded Vols start their final NCAA Tournament run with Zeigler on Thursday night against 15th-seeded Wofford in Lexington, Kentucky, in the Midwest Region.

“We know what’s at stake,” Zeigler said.

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here.

What to know about the severe storms and flash flooding hitting parts of the US

2025-04-05 06:13 Last Updated At：06:21

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Parts of the South and Midwest, still reeling from violent storms, tornadoes and flooding that have killed at least eight people this week, faced an ongoing threat of catastrophic flooding Friday that forecasters said would stretch into the weekend.

Severe thunderstorms threatened a swath of the country with a population of 2.3 million people from northeast Texas through Arkansas and into southeast Missouri.

In Kentucky, continued storms inundated roads and a mudslide blocked a busy highway on the outskirts of Louisville. A 9-year-old boy was killed, swept away as he walked to a school bus stop.

The downtown area of Hopkinsville, Kentucky — a city of 31,000 residents 72 miles (116 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, Tennessee — was submerged.

The first wave of storms killed at least five people in Tennessee and one each in Missouri and Indiana on Wednesday and Thursday.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called the devastation in his state “enormous” and said it was too early to know whether there were more deaths as searches continued.

There was massive destruction in Lake City in eastern Arkansas, where homes were flattened and cars were flipped and tossed into trees.

At least 318 tornado warnings have been issued by the National Weather Service since this week's tornado outbreak began early Wednesday, and that was likely to grow. It has already eclipsed the 300 tornado warnings issued during last month’s deadly outbreak in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and other states.

Not all tornado warnings involve an actual tornado, and it was too early to know how many were actually produced by the current outbreak.

The severe weather hit at a time when nearly half the National Weather Service's forecast offices have 20% vacancy rates — twice that of a decade ago — according to data obtained by The Associated Press.

Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong wind shear and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.

The prolonged deluge, which could dump more than a foot (30 centimeters) of rain over a four-day period, “is an event that happens once in a generation to once in a lifetime,” the National Weather Service said.

Private forecasting company AccuWeather said northeastern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, western Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee needed to prepare for a catastrophic risk from flash flooding.

“This is a rare and dangerous atmospheric setup,” said Jonathan Porter, AccuWeather chief meteorologist.

Forecasters have also warned of major disruptions to shipping and supply chains. Shipping giant FedEx, for example, has a massive facility in the danger area, in Memphis Tennessee. Barge transportation on the lower Mississippi River could also be affected.

Water rescue teams and sandbags were being set up across the region in anticipation of flooding, and authorities warned people to take the threat of rising water seriously.

“We need everyone to understand that all water poses risk right now and to take every precaution," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.

Associated Press writers George Walker IV in Selmer, Tennessee; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, Seth Borenstein in Washington; and Bruce Schreiner in Shelbyville, Kentucky, contributed.