Wyandanch's Zakai Zeigler has made impact at Tennessee
Zakai Zeigler of the Tennessee Volunteers reacts to a play during the second half against the Syracuse Orange at Thompson-Boling Arena on Dec. 3 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Credit: Getty Images/Johnnie Izquierdo
There are many roads to college basketball stardom. Few are as trying as Zakai Zeigler’s was.
There were setbacks and disappointments, moments of despair, and many moments where he had to prove himself. However, the kid from Wyandanch has come through all of it thanks to a relentless drive to excel.
And when Tennessee, the newly minted No. 1 team in the country, is introduced Tuesday for its Jimmy V Classic game against Miami at Madison Square Garden, Zeigler will come out as the starting senior point guard. Hofstra transfer Darlinstone Dubar is a teammate this season.
“Every day, taking a train to high school, I would always see the Garden,” Zeigler said in a telephone interview from Knoxville. “I always took the train, and I always had to stop at Penn Station. So, I’d always see it and just tell myself, ‘One day I'll be playing there.’ This is my [third] opportunity to play in that gym.”
Just two days earlier, the 5-9 Zeigler was thinking back to rock bottom and the moment he almost gave up on the dream of playing big-time college hoops. He’d finished high school at Montclair (N.J.) Immaculate Conception and, though he’d played well, there was only a single scholarship offer, an accept-it-or-forget-it proposition from Bryant.
“I’m betting on myself,” he said when he turned it down.
And he’d spent days in the spring and early summer at Bolden Mark Park in Amityville, Brennan Middle School in West Babylon and the Wyandanch Youth Center trying to improve his game. But despair was creeping in.
“I remember sitting in my cousin’s car, crying,” Zeigler said. “I was like ‘I can’t do it’ because I was putting in all this time trying to get better and better and I’m not getting [anything] out of it. It was time to hang it up . . . [and] I actually stopped playing after that for a week or two. But that wasn’t me.”
Things finally started to go his way when Shandue McNeill, one of the co-directors at West Hempstead and Bronx-based New York Lightning, suggested he go with their team to the Nike EYBL Peach Jam event in Georgia that summer.
“Coach Shandue told me that those two weeks would change my life and he was right,” Zeigler said.
He played well the first day, though it didn’t generate any sparks, but after that he was one of the top performers. He averaged 15.3 points and 5.5 assists in six games at the event and it caught the eye of the Volunteers.
They were looking for a guard to back up highly regarded freshman Kennedy Chandler and coach Rick Barnes' plan was to redshirt Zeigler. So Zeigler’s plan to do a post-grad year at Our Savior Lutheran in the Bronx and reclassify got scrapped and he went Tennessee.
It didn’t take long for Zeigler’s relentless drive to change Barnes’ plan.
“He's made as much an impact on our program as any program I've ever been, in terms of what he's done.” Barnes said earlier this season. “That's talking about a guy that, when we recruited him, we thought we were going to redshirt him, and then after one week in practice, we knew we couldn't do that.”
Last week, after the Volunteers (8-0) beat Syracuse, Barnes said, “He’s the best guard in the country with the way he affects a game — and I think he’ll only get better.”
“I knew the plan when I got here, but I had to prove myself,” Zeigler said. “Everything I’ve done there’s been times when I had to prove myself.”
As a junior he averaged 11.8 points, 6.1 assists and 1.7 steals, was named all-SEC and was the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year. So far this season he is averaging 12.0 points, 7.9 assists and 2.3 steals .
Zeigler also has been embraced by the Tennessee fan base and they came through for him when he needed it most. It was late February of his freshman season and his mother, Charmane, had moved to Far Rockaway, Queens, to live in a third-floor apartment with her grandchild and Zeigler’s 4-year-old nephew, who has special needs. Their home in Queens burned in a fire and most of their valuables were lost.
A GoFundMe was set up to raise $50,000 so the family could replace all that was lost. It ended up raising more than $350,000, enough for them to relocate to Knoxville.
“The Tennessee fans were great — they helped save us,” Zeigler said. “But it was other people, too. Kentucky fans and Arkansas and Florida and Vanderbilt fans, too. Just amazing people here.”
Those trips to school when Zeigler would see the Garden daily? They were part of a four-hour journey he made to Immaculate Conception because he felt it gave him the best chance for a big-time basketball scholarship. They started on the LIRR Ronkonkoma line, usually at the Brentwood station, and take him through Penn Station for a connection to the New Jersey Transit rail system. He had the relentless drive to succeed even back then.
This will be his third trip to the Garden. Tennessee lost to Texas Tech in his freshman season. The Volunteers returned the next year for the NCAA East Regional, but Zeigler was on crutches after surgery to repair a torn ACL; Florida Atlantic beat them en route to making the Final Four.
“I’m looking forward to going back again,” Zeigler said. “We still haven’t won there.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.