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

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.

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Tennessee guard Zakai Zeigler (5) celebrates after a basket against Auburn during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in the semifinal round of the Southeastern Conference tournament, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Qatar’s prime minister on Saturday said the Gaza ceasefire has reached a “critical moment” as its first phase winds down, with the remains of just one Israeli hostage still held by militants in Gaza.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told an international conference in the Qatari capital that international mediators, led by the U.S., are working “to force the way forward” to the second phase to cement the deal.

“What we have just done is a pause,” he told the Doha Forum. “We cannot consider it yet a ceasefire.”

“A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of Israeli forces, there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out, which is not the case today,” he said.

While the ceasefire halted the heavy fighting of the two-year war, Gaza health officials say that over 360 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the truce took effect in October.

In new violence, two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike northwest of Gaza City, Shifa Hospital said.

There was no immediate comment from Israel. But the Israeli army says it has carried out a number of attacks on Palestinians crossing the ceasefire lines into Israeli-controlled territory in Gaza.

The first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan took effect Oct. 10. The fighting stopped and dozens of hostages held in Gaza were exchanged for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prison. Israel sent a delegation last week to Egypt for talks on returning the remains of the last hostage.

The next phase, which includes the deployment of an international security force in Gaza, formation of a new technocratic government for the territory, disarmament of Hamas and an eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, has not yet begun.

Arab and Western officials told The Associated Press on Friday that an international body overseeing the ceasefire, to be led by Trump himself, is expected to be appointed by the end of the year. In the long term, the plan also calls for a possible “pathway” to Palestinian independence.

Sheikh Mohammed said that even the upcoming phase should be “temporary” and that peace in the region could only take place with the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state — something that is opposed by Israel's hard-line government.

“If we are just resolving what happened in Gaza, the catastrophe that happened in the last two years, it’s not enough,” he said. “There is a root for this conflict. And this conflict is not only about Gaza."

He added: “It’s about Gaza. It’s about the West Bank. It’s about the rights of the Palestinians for their state. We are hoping that we can work together with the U.S. administration to achieve this vision at the end of the day.”

Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said there is a “big question” over the formation of an international security force for Gaza. Speaking at the same conference, he said it's unclear which countries will be joining the force, what the command structure would look like and what its “first mission” will be.

Turkey is one of the “guarantors” of the ceasefire, but Israel, which has rocky relations with the Ankara government, has rejected any Turkish participation in the force.

“Thousands of details, questions are in place,” Fidan said. "I think once we deploy ISF, the rest will come.”

The war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants entered Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking over 250 people hostage. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 70,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but says that nearly half the dead have been women and children. The ministry is part of Gaza's Hamas government and its numbers are considered reliable by the U.N. and other international bodies.

Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Tents sheltering displaced Palestinians stand amid the destruction left by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Gaza City Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)