Purdue pounded Indiana at Assembly Hall while reminding everybody that the best program in the state calls Mackey Arena home. Samford extended the sport’s longest winning streak to 16 games with a victory at Western Carolina. Kansas State’s Jerome Tang guided his Wildcats to an overtime victory over Baylor to improve to 3-0 against former boss and forever friend Scott Drew.
It was a fun Tuesday.
But the story of the night was Dalton Knecht — Tennessee’s 6-foot-6 wing who has been on some kind of heater over the past week. After scoring 28 points last Wednesday at Mississippi State, and 36 more on Saturday at Georgia, the transfer from Northern Colorado finished with a career-high 39 points in Tuesday’s 85-66 victory over Florida.
Knecht was 13 of 23 from the field. He made four of the six 3-pointers he attempted.
“He’s been doing that to everybody,” said Florida coach Todd Golden. “He did a lot in transition and broken plays. We weren’t good enough to protect the rim.”
Knecht’s path to college basketball stardom has been unusual. He was only 6-foot-1 when he graduated high school, and with limited options he enrolled at Northeastern Junior College. While there, Knecht grew five inches and became a First Team National Junior College All-American, which led to him transferring to Northern Colorado, where he led the Big Sky in scoring as a senior before deciding to use a fifth year of eligibility playing for Rick Barnes at Tennessee.
It’s going brilliantly.
Knecht is now averaging 18.4 points after scoring a total of 103 in UT’s past three games. He’s the main reason the Vols are now 13-4 overall, 7-4 in the first two quadrants (with zero losses outside of Quadrant 1) and ranked fifth in Wednesday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Purdue remains No. 1 for the seventh consecutive day.
Purdue improved to 16-2 on Tuesday with an 87-66 win at Indiana. The Boilermakers now have a national-best six Quadrant-1 victories and a national-best 11 wins inside the first two quadrants. No other team has more than eight wins inside the first two quadrants.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
Biggest Movers
9
Brigham Young
3
Wisconsin
