Tag: Tennessee Basketball

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Mississippi

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

If you think I can’t get some jokes off about a school that can’t figure out if it’s the Rebels or the Black Bears and has a coach named Kermit, you’re wrong. Just kidding, this is mostly joke-free; I have to leave those to the professionals.

Kermit Davis did more for Middle Tennessee basketball than most coaches do in their lifetime. Upon arrival in 2002, Davis took over a program just two seasons removed from going 1-15 in Sun Belt play. They hadn’t participated in the NCAA Tournament since 1989. There was no “culture” to speak around MTSU basketball, other than it being a profoundly mediocre experience for all involved. What Davis had to do was perform one of the most gradual rebuilds I can recall. Across his first nine seasons at MTSU, the Blue Raiders never won fewer than 15 games. They also never won more than 19.

Then 2011-2012 came, MTSU went 14-2 in Sun Belt play, and the school was forever changed. From that season to Kermit’s final run in 2017-18, MTSU not only won its first NCAA Tournament game in 27 years (as a 15 seed!), they came right back the next year and did it again. He got them ranked for the first time in school history. They won 24+ games six times in his final seven seasons. The job he did was objectively better than just about any other job done in the same time frame.

Kermit was born in Mississippi, played for his dad at Mississippi State, and after a 32-year break, moved back to Mississippi to coach an Ole Miss program with a similar lack of historical success. Seeing as Kermit is one of the nicest guys in basketball, I’ll be watching to see if he can pull two MTSUs in one career. It takes time.

The following game information section exists.

  • THE OPPONENT: Mississippi (8-8, 3-6).
  • THE TIME: 7 PM ET.
  • THE CHANNEL: ESPN2.
  • THE ANNOUNCERS: Kevin Fitzgerald (PBP) and Dane Bradshaw (color)!
  • THE SPREAD: Tennessee -4.5.

Click below to skip ahead to your preferred section.

NEXT PAGE: Musicians from Mississippi, ranked: 1. Robert Johnson 2. Mississippi John Hurt 3. Howlin’ Wolf 4. Elvis Presley 5. John Lee Hooker and I could have gone to 15. A lot easier than Kansas!

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Kansas

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

If you have followed college basketball even loosely over the last 30 years, it is pretty much impossible to ever feel bad for the Kansas Jayhawks unless you’re a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks. They won 14 regular season Big 12 titles in a row. They won a national championship in 2008. They’ve made five Final Fours in my lifetime to Tennessee’s zero. In 10 of the last 18 NCAA Tournaments, they’ve at least gone to the Elite Eight. How could anyone feel bad for Kansas?

And yet: here I am, typing that I did feel really bad for the 2019-20 version of Kansas. The Jayhawks finished the regular season at #1 on KenPom by over three full points, the widest gap between #1 and #2 since Kentucky had a 4.4-point edge on the field heading into the 2015 NCAA Tournament. (At the time, it really did make sense.) If the NCAA Tournament had gone on, they would’ve been the favorite to win it all and bring home a second championship for Bill Self. In terms of pure Efficiency Margin, it was the third-best team Bill Self has ever coached (2007-08 and 2009-10 a bit ahead) and one of the best teams in school history.

And then…the NCAA Tournament never happened. Devon Dotson and Udoka Azubuike left for professional pastures; Isaiah Moss graduated; Bill Self suddenly had to replace two of the 10 or so most impactful players in all of college basketball with nothing to show for it. Objectively, that’s brutal. So, yeah, I do hurt for them, in the way you would hurt for the Green Bay Packers or something. This year’s team isn’t anywhere near what last season’s was, but if nothing else, they will get to see this team play on a Turner Sports affiliate in March.

The following game information section is included to relieve pressure from Grant Ramey’s mentions.

  • THE OPPONENT: #15 Kansas (11-5, 4-4).
  • THE TIME: 6 PM ET.
  • THE CHANNEL: ESPN.
  • THE ANNOUNCERS: Bob Wischusen (PBP) and Dick Vitale (color).
  • THE SPREAD: Is not up as of publishing time, but is Tennessee -2 on KenPom and Tennessee -4.3 on Bart Torvik.

If you’d like to skip ahead to a certain section, click below:

NEXT PAGE: Musicians/artists from Kansas, ranked: 1. Charlie Parker (born on the Kansas side of KC) 2. Gene Clark (went to HS in Kansas) 3. Janelle Monae (actually from Kansas!)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Missouri (#2)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

You remember this team. It’s the one Tennessee played and beat by 20 just over three weeks ago. That was pretty easy! I have a feeling this will be a little less easy. Such performances probably represent the absolute peak of what Tennessee can do on a basketball court, but undeniably, a win is needed after Tennessee’s Tuesday implosion. In some ways, it’s like the reverse of the first game: you’ve got to bring the fans back up to earth instead of having to keep them grounded.

The below game information section is included to relieve pressure from the mentions of such esteemed writers as Grant Ramey and…probably just Grant Ramey.

  • THE OPPONENT: #19 Missouri (9-2, 3-2).
  • THE TIME: 8:30 PM ET???? For some reason?
  • THE CHANNEL: SEC Network.
  • THE SPREAD: Tennessee -7.5.

If you’d like to skip ahead to a certain section, click below:

NEXT PAGE: Hey Jon Sundvold I hope you’re reading this. Can you call more games involving Tennessee? I did not realize that you sounded exactly like David Letterman and I would like to hear more of it

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Florida (#1)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

To be frank, it’s a little difficult to write these previews, knowing that in a normal world, Florida likely would’ve had Keyontae Johnson available. Before we even really get started here, a reminder for Vol fans to be praying for his recovery and for the best possible outcome.

Alright, back to the rivalry. Tennessee has defeated Florida on four straight occasions. Mike White, who was about $250K in assistant money away from being Tennessee’s head coach, is 1-5 against Rick Barnes. And I have to say, this is one of my favorite sites on the Internet at the moment.

Here are the things to know about these Florida Gators:

  • Based on the roster they had heading into the season, Bart Torvik’s site had them ranked 10th. I know, I know: sounds ridiculous. But Bart’s site also nailed how good Texas would be when a lot of others doubted.
  • That said, the Gators are now ranked 37th and freefalling on the same site.
  • The Gators are as close to a schizophrenic team as Tennessee can draw this year. They’ve got five 90+ Game Scores on Torvik’s site (that’s very good)…and five performances of 72 or worse (that’s not good).
  • The only player who was on Tennessee’s roster the last time Tennessee lost to Florida (2017) is John Fulkerson.
  • Mike White is 1-5 against Rick Barnes and 56-34 against all other SEC competition.

Here is a game information section to relieve pressure from Grant Ramey’s mentions.

  • THE OPPONENT: Florida (6-4, 3-3).
  • THE CHANNEL: ESPN. Dick Vitale is on the call, just FYI.
  • THE TIME: 7 PM ET.
  • THE SPREAD: Tennessee -7.

To move ahead to a certain section, click below.

NEXT PAGE: If you ask politely I’ll give you my thoughts on Tennessee football. Just kiddin’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Missouri (#1)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Yeah, this is a big one. The Missouri Tigers are 6-0, #12 in the nation, and own wins over KenPom #17 Oregon (83-75) and #6 Illinois (81-78). Tennessee has yet to play an opponent who’s looked this good yet, though Colorado has come pretty close. For all intents and purposes, this is the premier game of SEC Basketball this winter, as Tennessee and Missouri look to be the SEC’s two best teams. Obviously, the conference has reacted appropriately by putting this game at 9 PM on a Wednesday night on SEC Network, opposite the Cotton Bowl where the #7 and #6 college football teams play each other.

Anyway, all of the things you already know – Cuonzo Martin used to coach Tennessee, they made the Sweet Sixteen once, things didn’t end so well – are mostly covered on the following pages. There’s a lot of words to come, but here’s the basics you need to know:

  • Missouri’s had four fantastic performances (Oral Roberts, Oregon, Wichita State, Illinois) and two…fine-ish ones (Liberty, Bradley).
  • This is Tennessee’s closest projected game of the SEC season, per Bart Torvik.
  • Tennessee has topped 1.25 PPP offensively in four straight games; Missouri hasn’t allowed an opponent to top 1.056.
  • Tennessee has held all six opponents below a point per possession on defense; Missouri has gotten to at least 1.066 PPP in five of six games.
  • This is, uh, important.

The below section is game information to relieve pressure from Grant Ramey’s mentions.

  • THE OPPONENT: #12 Missouri (6-0).
  • THE TIME: 9:00 PM ET.
  • THE CHANNEL: SEC Network.
  • THE SPREAD: Tennessee -3 or -3.5, depending on where you look.

If you’d like to click ahead to a certain section, use this menu:

NEXT PAGE: THE CUONZONE

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Quarterly Review #1: Tennessee’s answering these preseason questions very well

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

In the season preview, which is somehow over a month old, I proposed this statement on the basketball team at Tennessee:

“We can be confident of some things heading into 2020-21. Tennessee brings back a lot of talent from last year’s roster and a lot of young players with high levels of potential. They’ll get a full season to grow together, and even in a strange pandemic season, hopes are high. Preseason statistics models are a little lower on Tennessee, simply because their 2019-20 was kind of disappointing, finishing 68th on KenPom and 61st on Torvik, both the lowest of any school ranked in either site’s 2020-21 Top 20. National experts seem to generally have the Vols somewhere between 8th and 14th, which feels fair. Either way, fans are within their right to expect great things from this group and great things from the $5 million man heading the operation. They’ll have a lot of questions to resolve from here to March, but the nice thing about having as much talent as Tennessee has is an extended timeline to figure out the answers to those questions.”

In a new installment here on my website, I want to look into some of the questions I proposed for the 2020-21 Tennessee basketball team every time there’s a break in the schedule of sorts. Essentially, I want to know the following:

  • How has Tennessee answered the questions I proposed?
  • How impactful have their answers been?
  • Has this elevated their ceiling, or has it lowered somewhat?

All of which I’ll attempt to answer for them, in this post and in three more to come over the next three-ish months.

If you’d like to click ahead, choose below:

Here’s the schedule going forward, barring a schedule change: Quarterly Review #2 will be out on January 28 before the Kansas game; Quarterly Review #3 on March 5 after the regular season concludes; Quarterly Review #4 whenever the season firmly ends.

NEXT PAGE: The offense looks pretty good, IMO!

Pages: 1 2 3

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: USC Upstate

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

The University of South Carolina Upstate is a moderately-sized school located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. They’ve been around for a little over five decades. A long, long time ago, in 1982, they won the NAIA Championship. Here’s five facts about this program worth knowing:

  1. This is their fourteenth season of Division I basketball.
  2. They’ve finished over .500 in three of those seasons, with the most successful season being a 2011-2012 run where they got to 21 wins and 13-5 in the Atlantic Sun before a surprise loss in the conference tournament.
  3. They won 24 games in 2014-15.
  4. They’ve won 26 games combined over the last three-plus seasons after Eddie Payne retired post-2016-17 season.
  5. I’m trying to be positive here, so…they only lost to #113 KenPom UNC Greensboro by eight?

Please fast-forward to next Wednesday.

  • THE OPPONENT: USC Upstate (0-7).
  • THE TIME: 5:00 PM ET. I don’t know why either.
  • THE CHANNEL: SEC Network! Normal ol’ SEC Network!
  • THE SPREAD: Tennessee -33, over/under 143.5.

If you’d like to click ahead to a certain section, use this menu:

NEXT PAGE: They actually used to be called USC Spartanburg! Fun fact.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Saint Joseph’s

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Another day, another opponent that wasn’t originally on the 2020-21 basketball schedule. Such are the joys of attempting to complete a season in the midst of a 100-year pandemic, and thankfully, we’re about to see game #5 when it had almost began to look like we wouldn’t get to game #1. So, in the spirit of the last couple of these posts, I’ve already written a lot about the opponent’s team below. Let’s talk about the opponent’s program, in five bullet points:

  • The Saint Joseph’s Hawks, for much of your and my lifetime, were coached by Phil Martelli, who was fired in 2019 and later became an assistant for Michigan.
  • Under Martelli, the Hawks reached highs they hadn’t seen in 20+ years, including the ultimate coup: a perfect regular season and an Elite Eight run in 2003-04.
  • They never quite reached that high, but the Hawks made the NCAA Tournament seven times under Martelli and produced a slew of great memories.
  • Now they are coached by Billy Lange, a former 76ers assistant who designed the offense Philly ran under Brett Brown.
  • Lange is…6-30 so far.

To alleviate pressure from various media members’ mentions, here is a list of important game information.

  • THE OPPONENT: Saint Joseph’s of Pennsylvania (0-4).
  • THE TIME: 6:00 PM ET.
  • THE CHANNEL: SEC Network.
  • THE SPREAD: Tennessee -22.

If you’d like to skip ahead to a certain section, click below:

NEXT PAGE: Saints and/or Josephs

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Cincinnati

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Normally you get my long-drawn out intros here, but…uh, don’t really know how else to say this, but I wrote 4,000+ words about the Cincinnati Bearcats even without this intro. I value your eyesight and your attention spans, so I’ll keep it succinct. The Cincinnati Bearcats are a basketball team located in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are most well-known for:

  • Having a genuinely amazing basketball history and being back-to-back national champions in 1961 and 1962
  • Being an NCAA Tournament mainstay for the last 30 years
  • Somehow only making one Sweet Sixteen in the last 19 years despite feeling like they’ve made seven???
  • Remember when they blew it to Nevada despite having a 23-point lead or whatever?
  • They employed Bob Huggins until he got a DUI. Then they did not employ Bob Huggins.
  • Mick Cronin, maybe the least-remarkable objectively excellent basketball coach in human history, made them very good for a long period of time. Now they have John Brannen, who led them to an AAC title in year one.
  • Also they force this slop chili upon you when you enter city limits. Nasty!

The preview follows this very poorly-written intro.

If you’d like to skip ahead, click below:

NEXT PAGE: The Cincinnati chili offense

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Show Me My Opponent, 2020-21: Colorado

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Three days ago, this game didn’t exist and Tennessee fans were all miserable together, watching the Tennessee football squad (supposedly still a thing?) lose their 15th game in 16 tries to hated rival Florida. Tennessee fans everywhere needed a win.

Three days ago, this game didn’t exist and Colorado fans were some of the happiest football fans on the planet. In this bizarre shortened COVID football year, the Buffaloes are 4-0 with wins over UCLA, Stanford, and Arizona. Colorado fans don’t really need a win, considering they live in one of the most beautiful places in America, but I needed a mirror section here so please bear with me.

Fast forward to 7:39 PM Eastern on Saturday night, and all was well again:

The Colorado Buffaloes, at least in the KenPom era, have firmly been a bottom-tier team in both of their conferences. Prior to Tad Boyle’s arrival, the Buffs had made just one NCAA Tournament in 13 seasons, an appearance where they immediately got stomped by Michigan State in the opening round. Boyle, a former Jerry Green assistant at Tennessee, took over Colorado in 2010-11 after four seasons building up the Northern Colorado program from 4-24 in 2006-07 to 25-8 by his final season. He’s legitimately very good at what he does.

From 2012 to 2016, Colorado made four out of five NCAA Tournaments, and seven times in Boyle’s ten seasons, they’ve won 20+ games. They would’ve made the 2020 NCAA Tournament had it happened, so you can reasonably count that. Inarguably, Boyle is the most successful Colorado coach they’ve had since Sox Walseth (260 wins in 20 seasons, a pair of Top 10 rankings before the 64-team NCAA Tournament existed) in the 1960s.

You would have a hard time telling this to someone who doesn’t understand that it’s quite hard to win at Colorado, though. The Rockies are not exactly a recruiting hotbed. Boyle does have a Top 100 recruit on this roster from Colorado Springs (D’Shawn Schwartz), but among Colorado’s top five players, he’s the only squad member from Colorado. Their best player is from Minnesota, and Boyle’s had to go as far as Georgia and Canada to put together this team.

While you probably didn’t know much about Colorado prior to Saturday, thanks to Tennessee not having played them since 1981, hopefully you’ll come out on the other side feeling a good amount of respect for what they do. It ain’t easy, and I’d imagine that Tennessee fans could probably find a lot to like in an underdog program that finds overlooked guys who battle on the boards and play quality defense.

If you’d like to skip ahead to a certain section, click below:

NEXT PAGE: Colorado’s offense

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5