Square Dance? Slingshot? Tennessee Reached into Steph Curry’s Bag of Tricks For This Wild Play

Tennessee guards Zakai Zeigler and Jordan Gainey had social media talking on Tuesday with a unique move in the second half of the Vols’ win over Mississippi State.

Do-si-do? Square dancing? Floppy? We’ll call it the slingshot for now, but the move has a few different names.

Running towards each other along the baseline, Zeigler and Gainey linked arms in square dancing fashion and spun around each other to slingshot back in the direction they were originally coming from. Zeigler and Gainey basically took each other’s arms and orbited back 180-degrees while still moving full speed.

The play resulted in Gainey creating seperation from his defender off of an Igor Milicic Jr. screen as he bursted back out to the three-point line. Gainey missed the three-point attempt on the play but still got off a good look from it.

Here’s a look at the play from Tuesday… along with some good music.

You can’t unhear these ones pic.twitter.com/GyTlogzeMz

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“That Zeigler-Gainey dosey-doe action looks gimmicky but actually serves multiple purposes,” SportsLine’s Ryan Wooden posted to X during the game. “Defender can’t split the action without fouling if their arms are locked and they’re also using each other’s momentum to change directions quicker.”

It looks wild, but makes sense when you stop to think about it. Almost to a point where you start to wonder why teams with athletic guards don’t do it more.

One of the NBA’s best guard duos of all time knows a thing or two about it, though.

Back during their championship dynasty, the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry and Klay Thompson broke out the slingshot play from time to time. Eric Apricot of Golden State of Mind documented one such play all the way back in 2015.

“In the Warriors version, Klay and Steph both start under the basket (already a bit unusual to run a double floppy) and (here’s the very unusual part) basically orbit each other, sometimes locking arms and generally spin around Three Stooges style and try to run their defenders into each other,” Apricot wrote. “Then suddenly, one of them flies out and uses a screen. Sometimes the other one will use the other screen as a second option.”

In the play that Apricot is referring to, Zeigler and Gainey played the role of Curry and Thompson while Milicic Jr. played the role of Draymond Green setting the screen. While Tennessee was able to get a shot off from Gainey behind the arc, the clear first option for the play, the Warriors faced a double-team after Thompson received the pass. Thompson passed it down low to Green after the screen.

There’s so many options to look at after the initial slingshot with two shooters heading out to the perimeter on screens, screen-and-roll options, or the ability to keep moving it around the arc with the defense unbalanced to an open shooter.

If it works for arguably the greaest shooter of all time in Steph Curry, it’s cool to see Tennessee trying it out too. Especially considering it looks like one of the most ridiculous things you could do on a basketball court.

There’s even video of Curry pulling the move off with Jordan Poole from just a few years ago.

No. 6 Tennessee defeated No. 14 Mississippi State by a score of 68-56 on Tuesday night in Knoxville. The Vols will return to the court for matchup against No. 1 Auburn in Auburn on Saturday night. Stay tuned to Rocky Top Insider for live, on-site coverage of the game.