Best defense in SEC, almost worst offense

#29
#29
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
Another thing that is interesting is that while Alabama has the best scoring offense in the SEC and in the Nation, they are last in the SEC and #320 nationally! Kentucky is similar.
( #2 offense SEC/#2 nationally /#291 defense)
Their fans are probably making a similar post about their Defense. 😆

Just goes to show in college basketball good offense is definitely more valuable than a good defensive.
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You forgot the blue font at the end there
 
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#30
#30
pimo1 said:
You forgot the blue font at the end there
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Ha....nah, I really meant that. What's funny is over on Rupp Rafters someone had made a post calling out KY's defense.
Something else that's funny is the hosts at halftime of our game tonight had a whole segment talking about Kentucky's D and how they need to get it tightened up because they probably aren't going to be able to keep shooting their way to wins. Especially against top competition.

Having said all that, an elite O or D can be enough under the right circumstances.
I just see more teams being able to get wins in spite of a crappy D than I do vice-versa.
I mean Bama and Kentucky are both getting it done ( so far anyways) with a weak D.
You don't see as many teams hyper foucs on defense like Tennessee , and if they do/are more defensive oriented have the wins/success we do, IMO.

Good thing about Tennessee is we can score. We just tend to have a lot of nights where our percentages are really sucky.
I think ideally what you want is one or two guys that can individually create and make their own shot, and then have your team be able to play solid team defense.
 
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#31
#31
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
Another thing that is interesting is that while Alabama has the best scoring offense in the SEC and in the Nation, they are last in the SEC and #320 nationally! Kentucky is similar.
( #2 offense SEC/#2 nationally /#291 defense)
Their fans are probably making a similar post about their Defense. 😆

Just goes to show in college basketball good offense is definitely more valuable than a good defensive.
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And Alabama destroyed Vandy tonight even with their bad defense.
 
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#34
#34
VolGee4 said:
We are still ahead of Bama on KenPom even with their offense and tougher schedule. Our offense isn’t as bad as their defense. We are 23rd in offensive efficiency.
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That remains to be seen. Kenpom isn't infallible. A lot of things it doesn't factor in, too.
We'll find that out ( our offense not being worse than their defense) on March, 1.
 
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#35
#35
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#36
#36
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#38
#38
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
That remains to be seen. Kenpom isn't infallible. A lot of things it doesn't factor in, too.
We'll find that out ( our offense not being worse than their defense) on March, 1.
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Seriously? Facts that don’t support your theory, and it must be infallible? KenPom is regarded as a significant metric and really what some media members use.

Also, please tell me what it doesn’t use.
 
#39
#39
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
Yep. With an elite/high scoring offense you can a lot of the times you can just shoot your way to a victory. I mean giving up something like 85 ain't a problem when you average 90.
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It’s a huge problem on some shooting nights as you see from Alabama’s loss to Ole Miss. Very unlikely for Alabama to go all the way in the tourney because they will have a poor night at some point.

Also, look at Connecticut winning 2 years in a row. Look at Georgia’s repeat in football. Those two schools won because they had great defenses. Granted, they were good offensively, but not great. Great defense gives you a better chance to go all the way than great offense, in my opinion. Mix in a capable offense and that’s the mix.

Look at the 2019 national championship game between Virginia and Texas Tech.
 
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#40
#40
Tnphil said:
And Alabama destroyed Vandy tonight even with their bad defense.
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Context is important. Road games in the SEC are proving to be very tough for everyone. Vandy was trailing by single digits with 3 minutes to play then the refs took over and awarded Sears 3 fouls on what could have easily been called charges for ramming his shoulder into his defender. Without the officiating bias towards Sears it would have been a more interesting ending to the game.
 
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#41
#41
walkenvol said:
Context is important. Road games in the SEC are proving to be very tough for everyone. Vandy was trailing by single digits with 3 minutes to play then the refs took over and awarded Sears 3 fouls on what could have easily been called charges for ramming his shoulder into his defender. Without the officiating bias towards Sears it would have been a more interesting ending to the game.
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So your saying UT isn't the only team that gets beat by the refs?
 
#42
#42
Tnphil said:
So your saying UT isn't the only team that gets beat by the refs?
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I didn’t say Vandy got beat by the refs. I said it would have been a more interesting ending if the refs didn’t give Sears such a favorable whistle. I suspect we will get the same concerning Sears and his wild drives into the paint which will be quite frustrating. I can see why he didn’t go pro after last season as that part of his game won’t translate to the next level IMO.
 
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#43
#43
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
Ha....nah, I really meant that. What's funny is over on Rupp Rafters someone had made a post calling out KY's defense.
Something else that's funny is the hosts at halftime of our game tonight had a whole segment talking about Kentucky's D and how they need to get it tightened up because they probably aren't going to be able to keep shooting their way to wins. Especially against top competition.

Having said all that, an elite O or D can be enough under the right circumstances.
I just see more teams being able to get wins in spite of a crappy D than I do vice-versa.
I mean Bama and Kentucky are both getting it done ( so far anyways) with a weak D.
You don't see as many teams hyper foucs on defense like Tennessee , and if they do/are more defensive oriented have the wins/success we do, IMO.

Good thing about Tennessee is we can score. We just tend to have a lot of nights where our percentages are really sucky.
I think ideally what you want is one or two guys that can individually create and make their own shot, and then have your team be able to play solid team defense.
Click to expand...
The thing about our team is our offense seems to work best when we run and our defense forces a slow pace which leads to the conflict we have. We thrive on forcing turnovers and struggle on the boards our weakness is the half-court game which bodes badly for tourney time. In games where we get boards we win in game we lose on the boards we lose.

FL we lost 56-37 in rebounding and had a push in the turnover race.
Vandy 29-25 and the difference was offensive rebounds. again a push in turnover race.

The only other games where we lost the rebounding battle...we won the turnover race and thus won.

It comes down to shooting.. because we are not a good rebounding team in general we cant afford to shoot bad. A team that rebounds well (especially on the offensive end) can have a bad shooting night and still be ok. There is direct correlation. Against Florida we put up bricks and Florida came down with the board more times than not. We shot okay against Vandy, but they won on the boards and our defense (turnovers) didn't force many turnovers. having watched the game the box score looks really weird...Its like super even we shot better than them but they put up more shots.. turnovers and fouls were even, we even got more trips to the line. It was just the 4 extra offensive boards that led to those extra shot attempts for them.
 
#44
#44
pimo1 said:
The thing about our team is our offense seems to work best when we run and our defense forces a slow pace which leads to the conflict we have. We thrive on forcing turnovers and struggle on the boards our weakness is the half-court game which bodes badly for tourney time. In games where we get boards we win in game we lose on the boards we lose.

FL we lost 56-37 in rebounding and had a push in the turnover race.
Vandy 29-25 and the difference was offensive rebounds. again a push in turnover race.

The only other games where we lost the rebounding battle...we won the turnover race and thus won.

It comes down to shooting.. because we are not a good rebounding team in general we cant afford to shoot bad. A team that rebounds well (especially on the offensive end) can have a bad shooting night and still be ok. There is direct correlation. Against Florida we put up bricks and Florida came down with the board more times than not. We shot okay against Vandy, but they won on the boards and our defense (turnovers) didn't force many turnovers. having watched the game the box score looks really weird...Its like super even we shot better than them but they put up more shots.. turnovers and fouls were even, we even got more trips to the line. It was just the 4 extra offensive boards that led to those extra shot attempts for them.
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.
 
#45
#45
VolGee4 said:
Seriously? Facts that don’t support your theory, and it must be infallible?
KenPom is regarded as a significant metric and really what some media members use.

Also, please tell me what it doesn’t use.
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I'm assuming you meant to say "fallible", but
I didn't necessarily say what you said is necessarily wrong. I just said in general it isn't infallible/error-proof/perfect/incapable of being wrong. ( and it's not, like other measures of metrics it doesn't take into account things like injuries, luck/a team getting hot, where games are played, a player being in a slump/ emotional issues etc)
Our offense may not be worse than their defense. You can't look at any metric and surely know which one is better. Like I said, we will see how each does when we play.
Having said all that, I don't need any metric to know our offense is what we're going to struggle with this year.
Especially in road games, something Kenpom doesn't account for.
 
#46
#46
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
I'm assuming you meant to say "fallible", but
I didn't necessarily say what you said is necessarily wrong. I just said in general it isn't infallible/error-proof/perfect/incapable of being wrong. ( and it's not, like other measures of metrics it doesn't take into account things like injuries, luck/a team getting hot, where games are played, a player being in a slump/ emotional issues etc)
Our offense may not be worse than their defense. You can't look at any metric and surely know which one is better. Like I said, we will see how each does when we play.
Having said all that, I don't need any metric to know our offense is what we're going to struggle with this year.
Especially in road games, something Kenpom doesn't account for.
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Nothing will ever be 100% correct because it’s competitive sports. But KenPom is just an efficiency metric that does use opponent, schedule, and luck. Injuries are inherently included because a team won’t be as efficient without a star player. It doesn’t matter about wins and losses. It is a tool that the NCAA committee uses for seeding.

You can look at it over time and determine what teams are ranked based on efficiency. Also, one game doesn’t justify these discussions anyway- the model over time is a better barometer.

So, yes, you can look at this metric to determine how our offense or their defense is performing regardless of how people “feel” about it.
 
#47
#47
VolGee4 said:
Nothing will ever be 100% correct because it’s competitive sports. But KenPom is just an efficiency metric that does use opponent, schedule, and luck. Injuries are inherently included because a team won’t be as efficient without a star player. It doesn’t matter about wins and losses. It is a tool that the NCAA committee uses for seeding.

You can look at it over time and determine what teams are ranked based on efficiency. Also, one game doesn’t justify these discussions anyway- the model over time is a better barometer.

So, yes, you can look at this metric to determine how our offense or their defense is performing regardless of how people “feel” about it.
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I know what Kenpom is, but to necessarily say Alabama's defense is worse than our offense is moot. We end up playing them 3 times this year and they beat us by 15 all 3 games and it doesn't matter what Kenpom said or says. Their offense was better than our defense. The only way to truly know is to play.
If Tennessee continues to do good to great at home, but struggle on the road offensively, at the end of the year if the stats even out in regards Kenpom may say/predict we will do better than we actually will end up do in the tournament.
I've found in my experience the old eye test is another valid predictive measure. Providing you have a good eye that is.😉
 
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#48
#48
walkenvol said:
I didn’t say Vandy got beat by the refs. I said it would have been a more interesting ending if the refs didn’t give Sears such a favorable whistle. I suspect we will get the same concerning Sears and his wild drives into the paint which will be quite frustrating. I can see why he didn’t go pro after last season as that part of his game won’t translate to the next level IMO.
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Comprehension is really hard for some.
 
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#49
#49
Anti-shunshinepumper said:
I know what Kenpom is, but to necessarily say Alabama's defense is worse than our offense is moot. We end up playing them 3 times this year and they beat us by 15 all 3 games and it doesn't matter what Kenpom said or says. Their offense was better than our defense. The only way to truly know is to play.
If Tennessee continues to do good to great at home, but struggle on the road offensively, at the end of the year if the stats even out in regards Kenpom may say/predict we will do better than we actually will end up do in the tournament.
I've found in my experience the old eye test is another valid predictive measure. Providing you have a good eye that is.😉
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Well, you mentioned that it didn't involve luck, and it does factor that in. The offensive efficiency numbers include home and road games.

We can speculate that a major meteor will hit earth at some point, but I will rely on the data for people that know to tell me.
 
#50
#50
VolGee4 said:
Well, you mentioned that it didn't involve luck, and it does factor that in. The offensive efficiency numbers include home and road games.

We can speculate that a meteor will hit earth at some point, but I will rely on the data for people that know to tell me.
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Well, then the data that says we are not getting a lot of ppg ought to be taken into consideration then. Maybe our defensive will continue to make up for it in respect, maybe it won't. Time will tell.
I know one thing, it certainly doesn't look to be the case on the road.
 
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