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DETROIT — T.J. Ford got that feeling again, the one he gets every so often since departing Rick Barnes’ Texas program in 2003, national player of the year plaques in his possession and a top-10 spot assured in the coming NBA Draft.

“There are times in my life that I just need to be around him,” Ford said of Barnes. “And that has nothing to do with basketball.”

So Ford took three days away from his wife, three kids and basketball academy in Houston and spent them in Knoxville. The December 2022 trip did have something to do with basketball — two guys talking about life whose lives revolve around basketball are going to talk some basketball — and Ford had a fine time hanging around Barnes’ Tennessee Volunteers team. One Vol in particular made an impression, the one Vol that Barnes wanted to make sure spent time with Ford.

“That kid,” Ford said of Zakai Zeigler, “is amazing. He’s got what it takes.”

That can mean a lot of things, and Tennessee fans hope it means Zeigler will be the second point guard to lead a Barnes team to the Final Four, 21 years after Ford did it — that would require a win for the Midwest Region No. 2 seed Vols (26-8) over No. 3 seed Creighton (25-9) on Friday at Little Caesar’s Arena, then another Sunday, potentially against Midwest No. 1 seed Purdue.

There’s no doubt that applies to Zeigler’s ability to navigate an upbringing in various towns on New York’s Long Island that included hiding in train-car bathrooms to get to the high school in New Jersey that elevated his basketball prospects. The 5-foot-9 junior guard’s adulthood has included a fire that destroyed his family’s home in 2022, when he was a freshman at Tennessee — resulting in a university-sanctioned online fundraiser that yielded more than $350,000 and a new house in Knoxville.

“My mom has always wanted to move out of New York, so I felt like God was telling us, ‘This is your chance, I’m gonna break you down, but don’t worry, the build back is gonna be great,’” Zeigler said Wednesday before the Vols’ practice session. “I’ll never forget what so many people did for us.”

That was made possible by the stage afforded by Tennessee, and Zeigler got there after turning down a take-it-or-leave-it scholarship offer in the summer of 2021 from Saint Peter’s and betting on himself. He impressed the UT staff enough at an AAU event to get an offer from Barnes at the end of August. In that way, he is nothing like Ford, a five-star recruit from Houston who chose Barnes and Texas over Kentucky and other bluebloods.

But when Ford talks about Zeigler having “what it takes,” he’s also talking about being a point guard for Rick Barnes. That is a challenge all its own. Few have earned the trust to take over huddles or change a set call in the moment because they see something they like better. In that way, Ford and Zeigler are very alike.

“First off, it’s not easy,” Zeigler said. “Not easy at all. For all the people who think it might be easy, it’s really not. But if you’re confident and you play with your own swag, coach Barnes is gonna ride with you. Times will get tough but as long as you’ve got that same confidence and you actually listen to him — because he might yell at you, might tell you a thing or two — he’s just trying to help you.”

Zeigler needed a lot of it, coming to Knoxville a tick over 140 pounds as a lead guard with a score-first mentality. Now he’s 170, lifting at the level of an elite bodybuilder, faster than ever on a surgically repaired knee and playing the point as well as anyone in the sport. Whether the sport realizes it or not.

From ‘throwing the ball up there’ to running a team

Zeigler exudes competitive fury and joy on the court. He snarls at opponents as he tries to rip the ball from them or sizes them up with the ball in his hands. He smiles at them when one of his 3-point rainbows pops through the net. He offers begrudging nods of acknowledgment when they get the best of him. He talks trash. He jokes with the officials. He has a blast.

Those who compete with him in practice and play pickup games with him in the summer say he approaches all such opportunities with the same vigor. And that is not common. If anything, the deep voice with the New York accent is louder when it’s just the guys working out. More profane, too. One of the earliest lessons Zeigler got in Knoxville: Barnes does not use profanity and doesn’t like profanity.

“Sometimes if I let one loose and he’s right there, I might, like, catch myself before I say it,” Zeigler said. “I try my best not to.”

Zeigler was a last-second add to the 2021 class with no expectation that he would play during the 2021-22 season. This appeared on the outside to be UT taking a flier on someone who could be a nice backup point guard someday. Then he got to campus and went right at another freshman — five-star point guard Kennedy Chandler.

“We thought we were going to redshirt him,” Barnes said. “After two days, we thought maybe we should redshirt Kennedy. From the time (Zeigler) walked on campus, we had no idea.”

He ended up being an immediate fan favorite and a burst of energy for that team, which won the SEC Tournament but was upset as a No. 3 seed by No. 11 seed Michigan. He backed up Chandler, played effectively with Chandler often, shot 35.2 percent from 3-point range and averaged 8.8 points a game. Pressure and expectations were low; the return on investment was high.

But when Chandler headed to the pros after the season, as was always the likelihood, the coaching staff pivoted from crash course to graduate lecture — from helping Chandler run the team as a freshman to developing Zeigler to do it for years.

“I told him that summer, ‘You’ve got to become a point guard now,’” UT assistant coach Rod Clark said of Zeigler. “’No more just going as fast as you can, throwing your body into somebody and throwing the ball up there. That worked last year. Now you’ve got to be better than that. You have to.’”

Zeigler was an eager student. His AAU coach, Shandue McNeill, told Tennessee coaches a great point guard was in there as long as he could absorb the details of playing the position at that level. And Barnes is all about the details. Zeigler started working extensively on his midrange floater – because he needed that as a tool but more because that’s how Clark believes players can best get touch on their lob passes. Zeigler had no bigs who could catch the ball above the rim in high school.

The coaches emphasized changing speeds. Zeigler was all fifth gear as a freshman, which is part of why the staff believes he shot just 37 percent at the rim — if there’s no element of surprise, a guy listed at 5-9 is going to have his shot blocked and altered a lot at this level of college ball.

They emphasized the value of advancing the ball quickly in transition rather than always trying to push with the dribble. They worked on different methods of delivery, such as the crafty pocket passes that Zeigler now delivers to beat ball-screen traps, passes he wouldn’t have tried early in the 2022-23 season.

They watched film of former Barnes point guards in his offense — Ford, Kennedy, Jordan Bone, D.J. Augustin — and NBA players such as Tyrese Maxey and Jrue Holiday doing things such as shooting floaters and dissecting defenses by reading what the “tag man” was doing on a ball screen.

Zeigler vacuumed up the information. There wasn’t as much schooling needed on defense. His style fits perfectly with a defensive approach that is much more aggressive than when Ford played for Barnes at Texas.

“The little dude causes a lot of problems out there,” Texas coach Rodney Terry said after Zeigler’s disruption led the Vols to a win over the Longhorns in Saturday’s second round.

“Just a menace defensively with everything he does,” the next coach who’ll see Zeigler, Creighton coach Greg McDermott, said of him Thursday.

The work had been done by the time the 2022-23 season dawned. But in its second game, Zeigler was not the point guard he had been groomed to be in a loss to Colorado in Nashville. He had too many bad shots and decisions. Barnes called him out afterward and said he was benching him. He did, until well into SEC play. This is why it’s not easy to play the point for Barnes, and why a certain thickness of skin helps.

“It was just him being honest,” Zeigler said. “Some people might have thought it was brutal, but I didn’t see it that way.”

By February, Zeigler was flourishing. He was pushing for a 200-assist season with his scoring average up to 10.7 per game. A CBS film crew was in Knoxville for the Feb. 28 game against Arkansas, doing a piece on Zeigler and his family recovering from the fire of a year earlier and finding a new home in Knoxville. He went down awkwardly early in that game, and it was clear from the fall and the reaction — and confirmed soon after — he was done for the season. Torn left ACL. CBS segment delayed.

Zeigler cheered the Vols’ Sweet 16 run from a scooter. Still, he enters the Creighton game needing just four assists to become Tennessee’s all-time NCAA Tournament leader.

‘How many college point guards do stuff like that?’

Clark was making no eye contact with Zeigler. But he could feel Zeigler’s glare.

The Vols were going through film of Texas the day before the game in Charlotte, N.C. Barnes rotates his assistants on opponent scouting reports and Texas was Clark’s scout. The Vols’ routine is to watch some film of the opponent, then take it to the practice floor against the scout team. Clark announced the matchups — Santiago Vescovi would be guarding Texas star Max Abmas. Zeigler would have Tyrese Hunter.

“I’m just looking at him the whole time, like, ‘Yo,’” Zeigler said of Clark. “Like, waiting for him to turn his head, giving him a look like, ‘Are you serious?’”

“I finally looked at his face,” Clark said with a laugh. “It was easy to tell he was pissed off.”

The Vols practiced. Zeigler asked Clark afterward why he wasn’t guarding the opponent’s star point guard. Clark invited him back into the film room. He showed him how Hunter is really the one who initiates Texas’ offense, and how Zeigler’s starving-dog approach to defense needed to be applied to him, not Abmas.

Six Hunter turnovers later, punctuating an epic Tennessee defensive effort to overcome an abhorrent shooting night, Zeigler was ticketed to play in the Sweet 16 for the first time.

The learning continues. But Tennessee’s coaches want Zeigler voicing his opinion on all matters. He takes over huddles with regularity now. He overrules play calls — such as in a comeback home win over Auburn, with star wing Dalton Knecht starting to heat up on what would eventually be a 39-point rescue mission. Barnes called a play. Zeigler responded: “No no, let’s go five spread.”

Then he gave the ball to Knecht and moved out of the way.

“That’s stuff you expect, like, Jason Kidd and Steve Nash to do,” Clark said. “How many college point guards do stuff like that?”

Zeigler is “always happy or mad, but never sad,” Clark said, which he believes is the mark of a great player. Barnes said Zeigler is always in a great mood “except when he gets mad at himself.” But he is admittedly mad that he didn’t make the list of five finalists for the Bob Cousy Award, given to the nation’s top point guard. Purdue’s Braden Smith, a potential Sunday matchup, is a finalist. The Vols are mad with Zeigler, Knecht saying: “We know he’s the best point guard in the country.”

They know what he’s been through, the exhaustive and accelerated knee rehab that had him playing full games in November. Through all of that, Zeigler built everything else up with director of sports performance Garrett Medenwald. He’s 170 pounds of muscle now, and Medenwald called it “amazing” that Zeigler can deadlift 2.64 times his own weight — that’s 450, which is what a high-level competitive bodybuilder at Zeigler’s size would expect to lift.

Zeigler struggled early while getting the knee comfortable, yet he still sits at 11.7 points per game, with 68 3-pointers at 34.9 percent, with 204 assists to 76 turnovers. And he stands at the head of the team. That’s the only thing Ford talked about with him when they met during Ford’s visit to Knoxville.

Some of the sets the Vols run are exactly what Barnes ran at Texas, and many of them have changed. But the job is exactly the same. It’s knowing who needs a shot, who needs a calming voice, who needs a stern one.

“It’s about running the team, and you’ve got to have credibility with everyone,” Ford said. “A point guard for Rick Barnes has to lead the way competitively, has to be the toughest player out there. Composure, consistency, there’s so much to it. And Zakai has it all. He’s going to go down as one of the all-time great players to play at Tennessee.”

Maybe more than that. Weekends like this one do much to create legends … and comparisons.

“His DNA has impacted our program more than any player since we’ve been at Tennessee,” Barnes said of Zeigler. “Maybe anybody I’ve coached.”

(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)