Tag: Tennessee

Show Me My Opponent: Arkansas (#2)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Man, whatever. It happened. Who cares.

This Tennessee team was never going to be as good as the top 20 KenPom ranking it received in preseason. It was never going to be on the level some thought it may be after the blowout win over Washington. There was no point in time in which I thought Tennessee would be any better than, like, a 7-9 seed. A lot of this is based on the roster Rick Barnes constructed, but whatever.

I’m sort of done talking about this season, to be honest. It is what it is, and next season is going to be much, much better. Rick Barnes is not Mike White, and I really have confidence that he is not going to blow a top 10 roster in the same fashion. Watching Florida has been a serious chore this year, though that’s for Saturday’s preview to discuss. Anyway, we are here, here is Arkansas.

For two months, this Arkansas team was the story of the SEC. A 12-1 start with wins over Georgia Tech and Indiana wasn’t perfect, obviously, but this looked like a group destined for an 8/9 seed in March, which would have been serious improvement over the 2018-19 NIT squad. For year one of Eric Musselman’s tenure to end like that…well, everyone would’ve been thrilled. This squad isn’t deep at all, and there’s tons of flaws, but you can’t ever fault their effort.

Unfortunately, #grit doesn’t always win out. In fact, #grit has taken lots of Ls lately. Arkansas is 5-9 since that 12-1 start, with the best win being a road squeaker over Alabama. They’ve fallen out of the NCAA Tournament field entirely, now being listed on Bracket Matrix as one of the First Four Out. (Oh, to be in such a luxurious position! It must feel nice.) Nothing is trending right for Arkansas – welcome to the club! – and all the goodwill of November and December feels lost. Did I mention that Tennessee and Arkansas fans should be best friends at this point?

NEXT PAGE: Musselman’s approval rating is still very high, though

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Show Me My Opponent: Auburn (#1)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Since the schedule was first announced, this is the part of the season I think pretty much everyone’s been anxious about: The Stretch. At one point of the offseason, The Stretch looked like it might contain four games against KenPom Top 25 teams, with the easy game being a road trip to Arkansas, a place Tennessee never wins at. I advocated that Tennessee really needed to rack up as many conference wins as possible to feel okay about making the NCAA Tournament prior to this stretch.

Here we are, at the start of The Stretch, and in a way, it’s both better and worse. Better because, for Tennessee, almost every non-Arkansas opponent turned out to be either marginally or seriously worse than expected. Auburn may be 22-4, but they rank #35 in KenPom because they’ve been hilariously lucky in close games. Arkansas is the only surprisingly good team, and yet they’re still the slightest opponent left at #48. Florida…genuinely, if you can help me figure out what they are, I’d appreciate it. Kentucky is the best team in the SEC, which is good enough to be #28 overall.

There are no KenPom Top 25 teams in The Stretch. That’s excellent. What’s not excellent is that Tennessee has only racked up seven conference wins to this point in a season where they really needed eight or more to feel good about this. Two games in particular will sit poorly with the players and staff if they can’t turn it around in these five games: the 63-58 home loss to a terrible Texas A&M squad and last weekend’s two-point road loss to South Carolina. The second of those is far less offensive to me than dropping a home decision to a team that has lost to Harvard, Temple, and Fairfield.

It’s all in the past now. Tennessee can rectify those games by winning one more game than they’re expected to. Both KenPom and Torvik anticipate Tennessee finishing the season 2-3 in these five games. That would add at least one Quadrant 1 win, which brings Tennessee to three on the season…or the same number as 21-6 Saint Mary’s, which is not good when you’ll end up playing six more Q1 opponents than they will. If Tennessee can get to four, that gets them onto the bubble. It’s that simple. Can Tennessee actually Do It? We’ll see.

NEXT PAGE: Taking Tiger mountain (by strategy)

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Show Me My Opponent: Vanderbilt (#2)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Look: when a team like Tennessee, whose NCAA Tournament prospects are quite slim, plays a team like Vanderbilt, who is 1-30 over their last 31 games against SEC competition, it is very, very hard to get excited for the game. Couple this with a 6:30 PM Eastern start time and, well, yeah. I’m already bored. Why don’t we talk about the history of Vanderbilt basketball?

For a significant portion of my life, it has felt like Vanderbilt was ahead of Tennessee in the sport of college basketball. This probably was reinforced by one specific run to the Sweet Sixteen in 2004, right in the midst of Tennessee’s Buzz Peterson error. The ‘Dores weren’t particularly great that year – they’d get demolished in the Sweet Sixteen by eventual champions Connecticut – but getting there in the first place is a good accomplishment. I think about how exciting it was at the time that a team from Tennessee could make it quite far in the sport’s biggest tournament and I get a little nostalgic.

This was before I learned to despise Vandy, obviously. At the same time as the peak Bruce Pearl years, Kevin Stallings took Vandy to relatively new heights: five NCAA Tournaments in six years, though none of their runs progressed past the Sweet Sixteen. I would estimate that my peak of despising Vanderbilt University wasn’t reached until a couple of years after this peak, but I did relish in picking against Vanderbilt in the 2008, 2010, and 2011 NCAA Tournaments. It was an aggressively mundane, nice experience.

I think there are different experiences you can have with Vanderbilt based on your age. For instance, maybe you have particularly strong feelings about the Eddie Fogler era, which ended after four seasons at Vanderbilt with a 28-6 team that lost in the Sweet Sixteen. Maybe you are a C.M. Newton truther. Perhaps you remember Roy Skinner. Now, none of those memories feel quite so close; all that’s left is the worst program in the SEC playing very bad basketball that’s more reminiscent of a mid-level SoCon squad.

NEXT PAGE: Ranking the hot chicken places I have been to. 1. Prince’s 2. Hattie B’s 3. Bolton’s 4. Pepperfire 5. Firecracker 6. Hot Stuff

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Show Me My Opponent: South Carolina (#2)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

I guess at this point we’ve got to accept that South Carolina is just going to tank November/December in order to play well against SEC opponents. Tell me I’m wrong.

  • November/December: 8-5, losses to Boston U and Stetson; #107 on Torvik
  • January-present: 7-4, two wins over KenPom Top 50 teams; #31 on Torvik

The exact same thing happened last year, where South Carolina looked like the second-worst team in the SEC for two months and then turned it on for conference play only. This leads to some confusion among the generic SEC basketball fan, who sees “South Carolina, 15-9 (7-4)” and thinks “NCAA Tournament, yeah?” No! Nay, I will not let you fall for this again! South Carolina currently has as many losses against Quadrant 4 teams (two) as it does wins against Quadrant 2. Torvik gives them about a 10% chance of eventually making the Field of 68. None of the 79 bracketeers making up the current edition of the Bracket Matrix are brave enough to list South Carolina among their 68 teams.

And yet: while watching South Carolina take advantage of a horrifying offensive start by Georgia to defeat the Bulldogs (can we talk about Tom Crean?), I noticed something. For the first time all season, the SEC Network coverage team has started to list South Carolina’s NCAA Tournament resume in-game.

Good for the Gamecocks; generally, I think every single fan base should get excited about potentially making the Field of 68, even those who have made it for several seasons in a row and have greater expectations. I think their players should be excited, too! I just gotta see more, you know? You don’t erase a home loss to KenPom #285 Stetson with a pair of one-possession wins over Kentucky and Arkansas, especially in this particularly paltry edition of SEC basketball.

NEXT PAGE: Thinking about “Can’t Hardly Wait” by the Replacements, as in I Can’t Hardly Wait for SEC basketball to rid itself of boring squads like the 2019-20 Gamecocks

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Show Me My Opponent: Arkansas (#1)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Here is what I wrote about Arkansas basketball in January 2019:

“This stupid friggin’ team again. Prior to last year’s blessed 84-66 SEC Tournament destruction of the swine, Tennessee had lost six straight games to Arkansas. You will remember some of these fairly well: losing a second-half lead to Arkansas in Fayetteville in the last days of 2017, losing a second-half lead to Arkansas in Knoxville in the first days of 2017, losing a (three-point) second-half lead to Arkansas in Knoxville in 2016, losing a second-half lead to Arkansas in Fayetteville in 2016. You get the point.

This team never dies, as much as you want them to. I have watched Tennessee lose NINE DAMN GAMES to this team by five points or less in my lifetime, six of them from the Bruce era onward. The Vols are 4-4 against Arkansas when they’re ranked and the Hogs aren’t. Arkansas has not been a serious national threat since I was in kindergarten and haven’t even been a serious regional threat for more than a few years out of the last 20, but they always beat Tennessee, and God am I sick of it.”

All that changed is Tennessee demolished Arkansas, the Hogs have a new coach, and they look similarly frustrating. Onward.

NEXT PAGE: I’ll admit it: I only hated the Hog Call because I could never figure out how long you hold the “WOO” part of it. I get it I think

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Show Me My Opponent: Kentucky (#1)

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Well, it’s Kentucky. I could go through all the reasons that the reader, certainly a Tennessee fan, should despise this program. I could go through the laundry list of overlooked recruiting violations that likely exist. I could go through all the reasons to truly despise John Calipari, one of the sport’s greatest slime-based characters. Even recognizing Tennessee’s own NCAA Tournament failures, I could talk about how truly funny it is that Kentucky’s still only got one title under Calipari and hasn’t reached the Final Four since the 38-1 year.

But that would be a waste of time, honestly. You know who Tennessee’s dealing with. You know all the history. You know all the pageantry. You know how many of their fans come to Thompson-Boling, attempting to turn the arena blue. There’s no point in rehashing things you already know about. So let’s explore something you may have forgotten about: the time Tennessee defeated Kentucky 47-46 in Rupp Arena under Jerry Green.

Recently, I’ve been deploying a variety of YouTube searches in an attempt to sort of relive the Jerry Green era as it happened. I’m 26 years old and didn’t start watching Tennessee basketball until the first Buzz Peterson season in 2001-02; before that, my limited basketball viewing experience was entirely NBA, as I truly adored Allen Iverson and how he dragged the abysmal supporting cast of his 76ers through opponents every single night. As such, I genuinely had no idea Tennessee basketball was supposed to be any good until Bruce Pearl came to town in 2005.

If you have 73 minutes of free time today, you could do worse than watch the game with me. Just like Tennessee’s win in Rupp in 2018, it was the release of a lifetime’s worth of emotions. Tennessee hadn’t won in Lexington since Jimmy Carter was President. The broadcast itself feels like a beautiful, lost relic of the late-1990s/early-2000s; if you can remember when ESPN broadcasted hockey, it’s a similar blast of nostalgia.

Tennessee did not defeat Kentucky in the prettiest of fashions. They shot 30%, committed 17 turnovers, and, again, scored 47 points. But all that mattered was that they scored one more point than Kentucky, who shot 31% themselves. It’s one of the ugliest wins in Tennessee history, and I cannot promise you that watching it again will give you any other opinions than “is this Wisconsin basketball.” But: Tennessee won. If Tennessee ran this exact game and structure back tomorrow, no one will complain, and they shouldn’t.

NEXT PAGE: Did you know that zero SEC teams rank in the top 25 of KenPom right now? Being serious: please name me any SEC team that feels like a real Final Four threat.

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Show Me My Opponent: Alabama

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

The failure of the 2019-20 Tennessee basketball season started with Jordan Bone’s departure. This is of no dissent on Jordan; he made a business decision and it is one that any fan, rich or poor, should respect. If you have the opportunity to turn your craft into a professional career, you should take it. However, said departure left Tennessee with one returning starter: Lamonte Turner. Even Turner’s status as a “starter” wasn’t all that entrenched until late January 2019. Sixth man Jordan Bowden would return, as would bench players John Fulkerson, Yves Pons, and Jalen Johnson, of which fans had various takes on.

The failure continued with the quiet departures of both Derrick Walker (Nebraska) and D.J. Burns (Winthrop). Would either have been a serious factor for the 2019-20 Vols? No one’s sure. Walker’s sitting out this year, but Burns and Winthrop are undefeated at 10-0 in the Big South. Burns, at the very least, would be in the Tennessee rotation, likely giving Olivier Nkamhoua and possibly Euro Plastics another year of development.

The failure grew with the inability to attract a quality graduate transfer option as a year-to-year stopgap. Given Rick Barnes’ new contract, he knows and understands the pressure that comes with being a highly-paid coach in a town where college athletics is the #1, #2, #3, and #4 attraction. Being unable to land Kerry Blackshear over Florida is one thing; being unable to replace the Blackshear option with a quality, ready-to-go grad transfer behind him was another. I may be the biggest Euro Plastics fan in Knoxville, but even I would’ve been fine ditching the Blackshear idea early on for a quality mid-major option.

The failure now ends here. Tennessee sits at 12-9, 4-4 in the SEC, with the easy part of the schedule over. You can now say the quiet part loud: it should be better than this. Can Rick Barnes control any of the following?

  • Lamonte Turner career-ending injury
  • Euro Plastics NCAA tomfoolery
  • Zach Kent’s sudden departure

No, not really. Any one of those things happening is hard for a coach; three of them happening in the same two-month span is admittedly a brutal hand dealt. None of those three items should be blamed on Rick Barnes or his staff. However:

  • The inability to land a grad transfer stopgap
  • Waiting to find a point guard until Santiago Vescovi popped up in Uruguay
  • Jordan Bowden’s baffling downturn
  • Confusing lineups
  • Poor shot selection

Can, and should, be blamed on Rick Barnes and his staff. If Missouri can land Dru Smith from Evansville, who’s not a star but would be Tennessee’s second-best player, Tennessee should have been able to do something similar. I think we all love the potential Vescovi brings, but Barnes was probably right that he could’ve used a few months of additional seasoning before hitting the court. (He has the worst Offensive Rating of any player still on the team.) Jordan Bowden…honestly, who knows. But the number of insane two-big lineups (this destroys offensive spacing) and the number of awful mid-range twos (Tennessee is second-best in the SEC at making them, but they take far too few at-the-rim twos) is something a coaching staff should’ve been able to fix. And they didn’t.

It is what it is. The main option here, and the one I’m choosing, is to trust Rick Barnes can still learn a few lessons even as a coaching veteran. It certainly helps that next year’s team will be far superior to this one.

NEXT PAGE: I mean it is pretty crazy that Alabama’s only made two NCAA Tournaments since 2006. But I didn’t feel like doing 500 words on it

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Show Me My Opponent: Mississippi State

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

(checking Bracket Matrix to see how high my interest is for this game)

Alright, looks like Mississippi State’s settled in right on the bubble. A win in this game and they’ll be right in the mix, as of early February, anyway. I don’t know how people do the whole bracketology thing before the day after the Super Bowl, but I also watch basketball every single day of my life, so, I get it. Anyway, let’s check in on Tennessee…

…alright, pivoting to Back-Up Topic #2.

If you’re my age – 26 – the earliest realistic season of basketball you probably remember is around the year 2000. If you’re older or younger by a few years, shift it in either direction. For the longest part of my life, outside of a random pair of years in the early 2000s – 2002 and 2004, to be exact – Mississippi State basketball has been a pure afterthought. From 2002 to 2005, they made the NCAA Tournament four straight years, with the first three of those resulting in 3, 5, and 2 seeds. On average, getting said seeds would result in about 5.4 wins. Line those wins up right, and you should be looking at a Sweet Sixteen or even an Elite Eight run.

Instead, Mississippi State went 2-3 across those three runs. A 3 seed in 2002 resulted in a Round of 32 crash-out against 6 seed Texas; 2003’s 5 seed became a 47-46 upset loss to 12 seed Butler; most notably, 2004’s 2 seed resulted in a second round demolition by the hands of 7 seed Xavier. Since then, State hasn’t sniffed serious, consistent success, the closest being last year’s run to a 5 seed that resulted in an infuriating (if you’re a State fan, or if you are the writer of this post and have Thoughts on Liberty University) loss to 12 seed Liberty. The most recent State Sweet Sixteen run is still in 1996, which is also the most recent and only Elite Eight run, which is also the most recent and only Final Four run in school history.

Seriously: Mississippi State, once upon a time, made a Final Four as a 5 seed. They had to beat the 1 and 2 seeds in their region to get there. They had a pair of future pros on their roster in Erick Dampier and Dontae Jones, but the team’s best player was Darryl Wilson, an Alabama native that wore #00 and shot 41% from three. Amazingly, they are not the 1996 Final Four participant that would be the most confusing to imagine making a Final Four today; that would be John Calipari-coached Massachusetts.

I have nothing more to share on this topic, other than I would greatly enjoy talking to someone about how baffling the 1996 Mississippi State Final Four run must have been.

NEXT PAGE: I mean if they get in I guess anything can happen, sure

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Show Me My Opponent: Texas A&M

by Will Warren, posted in Tennessee Basketball

Writing about Texas A&M basketball as a 2019-20 entity is not very exciting, guys. I’ll be honest! You like honesty! Writing about Texas A&M basketball from a historical perspective, however, gets me a little more interested. You can somewhat neatly break down Texas A&M’s last 40ish years of basketball into three distinct parts:

  • Wilderness. From 1981 to 2005, Texas A&M made the NCAA Tournament once, which is…kind of wild to think about. In fact, from 1987 to 2005, they finished above .500 in conference play just once, in 1993-94. Shelby Metcalf, Kermit Davis, Tony Barone, and Melvin Watkins combined for one 12 seed appearance and zero conference titles.
  • Success. Then they made the NCAA Tournament six years in a row under two different coaches: Billy Clyde Gillispie (peaked with a 3 seed and a Sweet Sixteen run in 2006-07) and Mark Turgeon (5 seed, Round of 32 three times). For a very brief, specific six-year run in history, you could very reasonably say Texas A&M was one of the 20-25 best programs in college basketball.
  • Wilderness and Success and also Wilderness again. After Turgeon came Billy Kennedy, and with Kennedy’s second season came SEC basketball. Over an unexpectedly slow five-year rise, A&M went from the dungeon of the Big 12 to being a legitimate top two SEC team in 2015-16 alongside Kentucky. They’d get a 3 seed, complete maybe the most insane comeback in college basketball history in the Round of 32, then get demolished by eventual champion Villanova in the Sweet Sixteen. Two years later, they’d make another run at the Sweet Sixteen in one of the strangest seasons ever: an 11-1 start shot them to #5 in America, followed by a 2-7 stretch, followed by a 9-3 run that completed itself with a 21-point blowout of 2-seed North Carolina. After a disappointing 2018-19, Billy Kennedy got fired. They hired Buzz Williams…

…and here we are. Texas A&M enters this game just barely above the KenPom national average, which is to say that they’re better than Vanderbilt but no one else. They’ve managed a road win at Mizzou (mildly impressive?) and home wins over other sub-KP #100 teams Ole Miss and Vanderbilt, but that’s it. In one of the more astounding accomplishments of the season, they managed to go 0-3 in a Thanksgiving weekend tournament where they played Harvard (lost 62-51), Temple (65-42), and Fairfield (67-62). They barely hit a quarter of their threes. They could’ve lost to UL-Monroe (won 63-57, trailed for 19 minutes), Troy (56-52, 33 minutes), Texas A&M Corpus Christi (63-60, 20 minutes), and Texas Southern (58-55, never led by more than eight).

Torvik’s average lead/deficit, which is exactly what it sounds like, says that Texas A&M has, on average, been the team trailing in 14 of their 18 games. Their point differential is more suggestive of a 6-12 or 7-11 team. They’re already bad, but Buzz Williams’ first A&M team really should be staring down this Tennessee game with additional losses to Troy and Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Think about that: these Aggies are lucky to be 9-9. It always, always, always could be worse.

NEXT PAGE: Thank you, Kobe.

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