HOW TENNESSEE BEATS IT

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Obviously, this will not be the toughest test in the world. As with the other lightweights on the schedule, Tennessee will be using this game to shore up remaining concerns. Some of those include, but are not limited to, the following: offensive turnovers, especially by JJJ and Lamonte; scoring off of opponent turnovers with ease; contesting post-ups; transition defense. Also, they’ve got to find a somewhat reliable option to back up Jordan Bowden or Lamonte Turner and get the rotation consistently to eight men. All in all, a team of Tennessee’s caliber is going to have a few obvious flaws; thankfully, so does basically every other team in college basketball right now.

Offense: tons of opportunities to score inside the perimeter; also, please score off of turnovers

Tennessee has a major area of opportunity at the rim against a small, weak A&M defense. This could be another excellent Fulkerson or Pons game, and I’d like to see Olivier Nkamhoua get extended work down low.

Of course, Tennessee could give some end-of-game minutes to Drew Pember to get practice in the post against college competition. All in all, this shouldn’t present much of a struggle.

Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t think Tennessee needs or wants to take a ton of threes in this game, but they’ll take some, and it will be useful practice. You’ll see both Bowden and Turner get up their share, but Pons and JJJ should take a couple, too. Also: Davonte Gaines, Jalen Johnson, et al, let it fly. Mostly, Tennessee needs to get better at preventing their own turnovers while scoring off of the opponent’s; Haslametrics has them near the bottom of the national pack in points off of opponent turnovers.

Defense: this offense is terrible, go block a ton of shots and work on transition D

Also as I mentioned earlier, this is the worst offense that will come to Thompson-Boling Arena all season. Florida A&M doesn’t offer much that Eastern New Mexico didn’t do very slightly better, and their best player is only reliable when driving to the rim. The over/under number I’d like to set here is 7.5, as in Tennessee’s number of blocked shots inside the perimeter for this game.

Tennessee will get numerous chances to defend shots down low, and I’d personally be very disappointed if Florida A&M makes more than 40% of their twos. USC and Seton Hall combined to hold A&M to a 16-of-46 (34.8%) outing at the rim.

Outside the perimeter almost provides a useless scouting report, as only Melton and a couple others even bother to attempt threes with any regularity. Tennessee already does well here, so another ideal thing to work on is transition defense.

I thought Florida State got a couple easy ones on Tennessee in transition that shouldn’t have happened, as did VCU.

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