As Lofton goes, so go the Vols

#26
#26
On any given night, we or any other D1 program should be anyone in Atlantic Sun or the like. But, you do have to play or you can get beat.
 
#27
#27
Sort of missed in all of this so far is that the engine that really drives our offense is turnovers. And that is in no way attributable to one player.
If we don't turn the other team over and score in transition, then we wind up looking pretty average on offense no matter who you point a finger at.
 
#28
#28
We can win without Lofton having a big game (we have) just as Duke can and has won without having a big game.

Both teams also show losses when their best player doesn't have a big game.

That's about as much as you can read in to this. So much depends on match ups. We can beat Vandy when Lofton doesn't have a big game because our other players match-up with their other players better.

Clearly, Lofton on = better chance to win but no guarantee. He was pretty hot late against Bama but the other match-ups killed us.

Bottomline, it depends on who the opponent is more than anything else.

Also, Lofton not scoring doesn't mean he's having an "off night" shooting. In most cases, it's due to stifling defense denying shots.
 
#29
#29
(lawgator1 @ Mar 9 said:
My own perception is that you spread it around quite a bit and could get by a lot of teams even if Lofton is not having a great night. But, I do think teams will target him defensively and that the really good teams can probably beat you if they can force you to rely on Wingate, etc. I would say that, despite the fact that you can still win even if Lofton scores 10 points in a game, you are obviously much better when he is lighting it up in part because it takes pressure off the others and they can put it up only when they get the better looks.
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I would agree with you 100% LG.
 
#30
#30
(hatvol96 @ Mar 9 said:
Lipscomb is an indicator of what? Duke would beat Lipscomb to death if Reddick took the night off to play Halo with Adam Morrisson. I would hope Tennessee wouldn't need a huge performance from any one player to beat the Atlantic Sun runnerup.
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i don't think Libscomb is an indicator of anything....i was merely agreeing with and pointing out that we have gotten production form other players when Lofton was off.
 
#31
#31
(lawgator1 @ Mar 8 said:
An interesting article on CNN/SI about trends in certain tournament teams. Lofton is listed as the Number 5 player in the country in terms of point differential between wins and losses. He averages X in wins, y in losses. The inference is that if he is not able to score well, then it makes your team more vulnerable for the upset in the tournament.

Not sure I buy into the stat for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it ignores point production by other players in wins and losses, plus it assumes that the overall points scored by the compared teams are close enough that you can compare individual players between teams (and that is clearly wrong).

But it does raise an interesting issue: Is UT too dependent on the shooting of one player, Lofton? Just trying to stir the pot a little here, but I am curious as to whether your greatest asset can become your biggest liability. Thoughts?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writ....bkc/index.html
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When we played Memphis there, Lofton didn't show up.Bradshaw did.He had 20 plus points and Lofton had under 10, if recall correctly.the game was close until late, I think free throws hurt us as well.
 
#32
#32
(utfantilidie @ Mar 9 said:
When we played Memphis there, Lofton didn't show up.Bradshaw did.He had 20 plus points and Lofton had under 10, if recall correctly.the game was close until late, I think free throws hurt us as well.
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Our bench hurt us more than anything in that game. Nobody could score off the bench.
 
#33
#33
(Orangewhiteblood @ Mar 9 said:
Our bench hurt us more than anything in that game. Nobody could score off the bench.
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We also had no defensive answer for Shawne Williams down the stretch.
 
#34
#34
(hatvol96 @ Mar 9 said:
We also had no defensive answer for Shawne Williams down the stretch.
Click to expand...

Or Carney for that matter, but if our bench would have scored more than 6 points (all Patterson), we probably would have won that game.
 
#35
#35
(lawgator1 @ Mar 8 said:
An interesting article on CNN/SI about trends in certain tournament teams. Lofton is listed as the Number 5 player in the country in terms of point differential between wins and losses. He averages X in wins, y in losses. The inference is that if he is not able to score well, then it makes your team more vulnerable for the upset in the tournament.

Not sure I buy into the stat for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it ignores point production by other players in wins and losses, plus it assumes that the overall points scored by the compared teams are close enough that you can compare individual players between teams (and that is clearly wrong).

But it does raise an interesting issue: Is UT too dependent on the shooting of one player, Lofton? Just trying to stir the pot a little here, but I am curious as to whether your greatest asset can become your biggest liability. Thoughts?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writ....bkc/index.html
Click to expand...


If you asked anyone on this board what they wanted in terms of basketball perfomance this year out of our Men's team, most would have been happy with a tourney birth...We won the East! I could care less if we are too dependent on Chris Lofton, that dependency has given us 2 wins over UF, wins over UK and Texas, a down to the wire loss at Memphis, and oh yeah, most likely a 3 or better seed in the NCAA tournament. Start trying to stir the pot Gator and lend some advice to Joakim Noah about not sticking his face where it doesn't belong...Go Vols!
 
#37
#37
(hatvol96 @ Mar 9 said:
Lipscomb is NOT a tournament team. They lost their conference championship game to Belmont.
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You're right, sorry. I get confused by those two schools, they aren't more than a couple of miles apart. They split their regluar season series though.

Point being, OF COURSE TN is a better team if Lofton is scoring... duh. The Vols CAN win without him going big, but we'd all much rather him just have a big game.
 
#38
#38
(therealUT @ Mar 9 said:
If you asked anyone on this board what they wanted in terms of basketball perfomance this year out of our Men's team, most would have been happy with a tourney birth...We won the East! I could care less if we are too dependent on Chris Lofton, that dependency has given us 2 wins over UF, wins over UK and Texas, a down to the wire loss at Memphis, and oh yeah, most likely a 3 or better seed in the NCAA tournament. Start trying to stir the pot Gator and lend some advice to Joakim Noah about not sticking his face where it doesn't belong...Go Vols!
Click to expand...


I'm not talking about what you've done already, which is a great accomplishment. I'm talking about what you can do in the NCAA tournament. And that in turn requires an objective look at your strengths and weaknesses.

Your strengths are many. I think Pealr is a terrific coach and motivator. I also agree with an earlier post in this thread that your best asset is probably turnover margin (really, that is part of Pearl's coaching). These are two facotrs that favor you in March.

Two factors that hurt you, and which have also been mentioned here in one form or another, are the lack of size and the lack of depth. If you don't want to discuss the nagatives, that's perfectly okay with me. But if you really want to think about or comment on or debate your NCAA chances and how far you can go, well, then I think you have to talk about these issues.

As to the comment on Noah, well, I'll just let that go. It doesn't have much to do with how far UT will go in the NCAA tournament. My original post was a question of whether the team is so dependent on Lofton scoring that it could be a liability against a team that defenses him well and shuts him down. Most on here seem to think it COULD be a problem, but hopefully others will step up and perhaps you get some scoring off the bench. It could be a problem for Duke or Gonzaga, too. And by the way I completely agree with those who say that Duke and Gonzaga are MORE dependent on their stars than is Tennessee.

Bottom line: Your prior record got you into the tournament, but you get no points for that when the opening buzzer sounds.




 
#42
#42
(tnpreach @ Mar 9 said:
Lipscomb :eek:lol:
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They held Lofton in check... turns out that both Belmont and Lipscomb are good for being such small schools.
 
#46
#46
First, I love Lofton as a player. He is a rarity in basketball nowadays, a pure shooter.

With that out of the way, what is wrong with him now. Some of this late season funk can rightly be attributed to better defense on the opponents part. That is easy to see. It's hard to put up a jumper over a 6'6" - 6'8" defender.

What I do see is a seeming willingness on his part to go stand in the corner, and be content to keep his defender out of the action. He just doesn't seem all that interested in working his way open when this team desperately needs him to step up and lead them. I remember a couple of games back, after a bad play on his part, that Coach Pearl really got in his face during a timeout. Since then, I don't see him getting himself involved in the offense as he should. Maybe it's just that I'm a little dissappointed in the outcome today, but I've noticed this about Lofton during this whole stretch of games since the Alabama game. The only time I really felt he was getting after it during this stretch was the Florida game.

I hope that whatever is going on, Pearl can get it ironed out and get Lofton back in sync before next week.
 
#47
#47
(Percival @ Mar 10 said:
First, I love Lofton as a player. He is a rarity in basketball nowadays, a pure shooter.

With that out of the way, what is wrong with him now. Some of this late season funk can rightly be attributed to better defense on the opponents part. That is easy to see. It's hard to put up a jumper over a 6'6" - 6'8" defender.

What I do see is a seeming willingness on his part to go stand in the corner, and be content to keep his defender out of the action. He just doesn't seem all that interested in working his way open when this team desperately needs him to step up and lead them. I remember a couple of games back, after a bad play on his part, that Coach Pearl really got in his face during a timeout. Since then, I don't see him getting himself involved in the offense as he should. Maybe it's just that I'm a little dissappointed in the outcome today, but I've noticed this about Lofton during this whole stretch of games since the Alabama game. The only time I really felt he was getting after it during this stretch was the Florida game.

I hope that whatever is going on, Pearl can get it ironed out and get Lofton back in sync before next week.
Click to expand...

I agree with your post and don't have an answer for it.

Sometimes it seems like he doesn't even want the ball. He disappears in the corner, rushes out to catch a pass, stands there, passes it and then disappears again. He has been very lethargic these past few games.

I don't think we're setting good picks to get him open, we're not getting any offensive rebounds to kick out to him, lately we're not getting it to him in transition because we can't score and force the turnover, he doesn't seem to want to try and dribble into a shot and then when he is actually open... he's cold. :dunno:
 
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