bleedingTNorange
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2012
- Messages
- 73,697
- Likes
- 49,196
1. The final touches are put on the OOC slate and Tennessee puts a bow on their best start to a season in over 100 years, off to a 13-0 start. Nobody is going to argue this was some crazy daunting schedule, but it also wasn’t just full of buy games either, no matter how you slice it going undefeated OOC is incredibly impressive, and for the most part they were wins in convincing fashion, average margin of victory was 23.8ppg, that’s pretty wild.
2. Player of the game for me was Chaz Lanier, which works out well because I wanted to highlight him anyways. Through their first 13 games Knecht put up 203 total points, Lanier put up 255 points, so 4ppg difference OOC. In Lofton’s record setting year of 3pt made shots in his first 13 games he made 40 3’s, Lanier has made 51 3’s. Obviously DK had a bonkers SEC run and I don’t see Lanier (or anyone) matching that, but the above highlights just how good he has been for us to start the year. If it wasn’t for Knecht last season Lanier would be getting a ton more publicity both locally and nationally it feels like, but in a way seems like what he’s doing is being a bit overlooked due to what Knecht did last year, not necessarily a bad thing though. Will be fun to continue to track, but what he’s doing has really been fun to watch and should really benefit Tennessee in the portal going forward.
3. I addressed it after the Indiana exhibition and then back tracked a bit after we started the year not shooting a ton of 3’s and dominating teams from 2, we have continued to shoot well from 2, but our 3pt numbers have struggled a bit of late, mainly Zeigler & Milicic. This team is going to have to shoot the ball well from 3, obviously Lanier is doing his part but those 2 guys will have to start to do their part or Lanier’s job is going to get even tougher as the focus only increases on him. Outside of Lanier & Gainey you’ve got 4 rotational guys shooting sub 32% (Mashack), 3 of them under 30% (Zeigler, Milicic & Dubar), that can’t continue.
4. The defense continues to once again be elite which as I’ve mentioned multiple times really is impressive given how many new pieces there are in the rotation, tons of credit to veteran players as well as the staff instilling that culture here and making it clear to new additions that you will play defense. 2nd in FG% defense, 2nd in points allowed, 1st in 3pt% defense all while being a good rebounding team is a great recipe to making sure you’re in most games and have a great chance.
5. So looking ahead the Vols finished 13-0 and have positioned themselves incredibly well heading into SEC play, which is a great thing because this is likely to be the best conference there’s ever been, and wins are going to come at a premium. Not playing a crazy tough OOC schedule was probably ideal this year because the SOS is going to work out just fine and get a gigantic boost from playing in the SEC, and come March there shouldn’t be any sort of issues with our overall SOS on our resume. I believe every game on our schedule will currently qualify as a Q1 or Q2 game, meaning we should be able to avoid tacking any bad losses on our resume which is an added benefit also.
6. So what would be a good expectation for SEC play? 12-6 or 13-5 seem to be the 2 most common numbers I’ve seen, given that Tennessee dodged a loss OOC I’ll go 12-6 and say a slip up or two is quite plausible with how well they showed up OOC, and even at 12-6 it should have you Top 4 in the league getting a double bye, should also have Tennessee firmly on the 2 seed line with a solid chance of a 1 obviously depending on what others do, it also makes my next step easier math lol. 18 game schedule, I’m gonna break it up into 3 game mini schedules, right now per barttorvik other than this first 3 game mini schedule we are favored by 6+ in 2/3 of the games in 5/6 of those mini 3 game schedules, so in theory this first 3 game schedule would be our toughest of the year. If we can go 2-1 every time out in these 3 game schedules we’d hit that 12-6 mark at seasons end and hit that mark, just an easy way to kind of track things over this gauntlet imo. If you go 1-2 or 0-3 obviously you’re behind the 8 ball, if you can go 3-0 in any of these that’s a major W, so on so forth, it all gets started tomorrow afternoon.
GBO!!!
2. Player of the game for me was Chaz Lanier, which works out well because I wanted to highlight him anyways. Through their first 13 games Knecht put up 203 total points, Lanier put up 255 points, so 4ppg difference OOC. In Lofton’s record setting year of 3pt made shots in his first 13 games he made 40 3’s, Lanier has made 51 3’s. Obviously DK had a bonkers SEC run and I don’t see Lanier (or anyone) matching that, but the above highlights just how good he has been for us to start the year. If it wasn’t for Knecht last season Lanier would be getting a ton more publicity both locally and nationally it feels like, but in a way seems like what he’s doing is being a bit overlooked due to what Knecht did last year, not necessarily a bad thing though. Will be fun to continue to track, but what he’s doing has really been fun to watch and should really benefit Tennessee in the portal going forward.
3. I addressed it after the Indiana exhibition and then back tracked a bit after we started the year not shooting a ton of 3’s and dominating teams from 2, we have continued to shoot well from 2, but our 3pt numbers have struggled a bit of late, mainly Zeigler & Milicic. This team is going to have to shoot the ball well from 3, obviously Lanier is doing his part but those 2 guys will have to start to do their part or Lanier’s job is going to get even tougher as the focus only increases on him. Outside of Lanier & Gainey you’ve got 4 rotational guys shooting sub 32% (Mashack), 3 of them under 30% (Zeigler, Milicic & Dubar), that can’t continue.
4. The defense continues to once again be elite which as I’ve mentioned multiple times really is impressive given how many new pieces there are in the rotation, tons of credit to veteran players as well as the staff instilling that culture here and making it clear to new additions that you will play defense. 2nd in FG% defense, 2nd in points allowed, 1st in 3pt% defense all while being a good rebounding team is a great recipe to making sure you’re in most games and have a great chance.
5. So looking ahead the Vols finished 13-0 and have positioned themselves incredibly well heading into SEC play, which is a great thing because this is likely to be the best conference there’s ever been, and wins are going to come at a premium. Not playing a crazy tough OOC schedule was probably ideal this year because the SOS is going to work out just fine and get a gigantic boost from playing in the SEC, and come March there shouldn’t be any sort of issues with our overall SOS on our resume. I believe every game on our schedule will currently qualify as a Q1 or Q2 game, meaning we should be able to avoid tacking any bad losses on our resume which is an added benefit also.
6. So what would be a good expectation for SEC play? 12-6 or 13-5 seem to be the 2 most common numbers I’ve seen, given that Tennessee dodged a loss OOC I’ll go 12-6 and say a slip up or two is quite plausible with how well they showed up OOC, and even at 12-6 it should have you Top 4 in the league getting a double bye, should also have Tennessee firmly on the 2 seed line with a solid chance of a 1 obviously depending on what others do, it also makes my next step easier math lol. 18 game schedule, I’m gonna break it up into 3 game mini schedules, right now per barttorvik other than this first 3 game mini schedule we are favored by 6+ in 2/3 of the games in 5/6 of those mini 3 game schedules, so in theory this first 3 game schedule would be our toughest of the year. If we can go 2-1 every time out in these 3 game schedules we’d hit that 12-6 mark at seasons end and hit that mark, just an easy way to kind of track things over this gauntlet imo. If you go 1-2 or 0-3 obviously you’re behind the 8 ball, if you can go 3-0 in any of these that’s a major W, so on so forth, it all gets started tomorrow afternoon.
GBO!!!
