BTO’s Kentucky Postgame Report

[bleedingTNorange]

1. Sorry for the delay, but had to avoid this place for ~24 hours, the crazies were out in full force and it was a waste of time to try to put together anything level headed to read because it would just fall on deaf ears. I will still probably avoid this place for a bit judging by the posts I’m still seeing but wanted to get up a postgame report. First and foremost, losing sucks, especially to a rival and a team that is unranked currently, add in Lofton’s Day and it really is a shame and I get the emotions being high. With that said, things happen in basketball over a long season as well and it’s best not to overreact to a single game, that doesn’t mean just ignore it either though.

2. Shoutout to Uros, he played his best game in orange and even if Cal said postgame that was essentially their plan that still was a nice offensive showing from him. His rebounding wasn’t good, nobody other than maybe JJJ rebounded well though and that’s biggest reason we lost the game. I thought Uros spend too much time/energy locating and face boxing out Oscar rather than just attacking the rebound with max effort, to me seems like that would have been a better strategy.

3. Rebounding & missed layup are why we lost that game, plain and simple…do either of those things and we win, do both of them and we probably win pretty handily. IIIRC it was 6 missed layups that are probably 90%> hit rates, that’s 12 points right there that we cost ourselves. As for rebounding, Kentucky rebounded 25% of their misses while we got just 7% of our misses, even those numbers up a bit and you’re talking a 9-10 point swing as well at least. Never mind that Kentucky scored about 6-7 more points from the FT line than expected given their season average %. All that to say that while we did play a slower style and didn’t shoot well from 3, we also failed to execute in other areas of the game and that is what cost us. We played good defense for the most part and we got ourselves some really good looks at the basket, we still did enough to win that game, but didn’t execute.

4. I don’t want to blast college kids so I’ll just mention a few negatives overall, but really thought Zeigler, Nkamhoua & Phillips struggled mightily today. Ziegler’s missed layups killed us and he had some other ill advised shots as well, 3-12 from the field isn’t what we need from him, not sure if it was the knee or pressure of wearing #5 or just a bad game, but given our PG situation we are in a bad spot if he’s playing a bad game. Nkamhoua was just flat out a no show, I’ll put partial blame on Barnes for not giving him minutes at the 5 as he couldn’t play the 4 in this game against Toppin or Reeves, they are just too quick, but I doubt he could’ve handled Oscar’s strength either, but wouldn’t have minded seeing us pull him away from the basket with Nkamhoua outside shot. Phillips is a true freshman so not gonna say much there, but if any NBA scouts were watching (they were) they didn’t come away from that one thinking there’s a 1st round pick, that’s for sure.

5. Overall this isn’t a huge loss or bad loss so long as the team/staff takes away some lessons, improves and goes and win some games. We weren’t going 18-0 in league play so now just go win some games and see what happens, we still get Bama and Texas at home 2 games that would make up for this L, take advantage. These next 3 SEC games are very winnable, 2 being road games, go 3-0 heading into the Texas matchup at home and see where things stand. Projections still have us at 26-5(15-3) which would still have us very much in 1/2 seed territory along with Top 2 for SEC regular season as well. We still sit at #2 on KenPom & Barttorvik, the defense is elite still and the offense took a hit…we aren’t gonna score 80+ every night especially when a team slows it down like Kentucky, but you gotta take advantage of layups in a low possession game like that, the room for error is so much small.


GBO!!!

 

[CAVPUT]

You hit the nail on the head about ZZ. When March comes, it's guard play that normally carries the day. Love ZZ but when we get up against teams with solid guards, my concern meter buzzes loudly. Also, going along with JJJs comments about UK wanting it more, that goes hand in hand with rebounding. It's a matter of want to. This team will live and die by defense and rebounding. "Want to" has to be there every night or we'll pay the price. My biggest concern is the apparent lack of want to in a game against UK at home and on Loftons big day. Hard for me to get my head wrapped around that.

 

[bleedingTNorange]

You hit the nail on the head about ZZ. When March comes, it's guard play that normally carries the day. Love ZZ but when we get up against teams with solid guards, my concern meter buzzes loudly. Also, going along with JJJs comments about UK wanting it more, that goes hand in hand with rebounding. It's a matter of want to. This team will live and die by defense and rebounding. "Want to" has to be there every night or we'll pay the price. My biggest concern is the apparent lack of want to in a game against UK at home and on Loftons big day. Hard for me to get my head wrapped around that.

Not an excuse at all, but a team with their season on the line essentially against a team playing for 1/2 seed at that moment probably explains why Kentucky “wanted it more”. For that to be the case and us still just need to make layups and we win the game, or they don’t have a seasons best FT performance etc etc is a possible silver lining…but we are a team that isn’t the most talented, typically we out effort teams and that wasn’t the case.

 

[kckempf]

Even as badly as we played the point difference for Kentucky required them to both get a friendly whistle and make their free throws at a much higher rate than normal. The combination of missing a higher than normal amount of our threes and layups and them hitting more than their usual share of free throws was statistically unlikely, but the thing about statistics is that unlikely doesn't mean never. The big thing I think we can take away is that we can rebound better, because not all of those rebounds we lost were because of the kind of game the refs decided to allow.

 

[Orangeblooded615]

We desperately need one of JJJ or Phillips to be able dominate on the offensive side. Someone that can take over. That and consistency from ZZ and Scovi.

 

[TheMookieMonster]

Thanks, BTO. You always put things in perspective. Yesterday certainly wasn’t a season-ender by any means. It was an ugly loss, but we’re still in position. I think the biggest disappointment was just the fact that it was Lofton Day, which made emotions run high. But, that’s why all week I said I just had a weird/bad feeling about the game. Things just felt primed for a let down after the UK loss to Carolina.

Overall, this team is still good, but with how Alabama is playing it makes our chances of winning the SEC much slimmer. We can’t really afford to blink again, at least for a few weeks. I guess it’s just time to see where the chips fall and not worry too much about it. Hope we respond on Tuesday.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

ZZ getting to the rim is ineffective if he rarely converts or draws fouls. He did convert back-to-back once in the middle of the second half, but usually when he’s in the paint not much good comes from it.

He does bring the energy and plays solid defense though. Maybe he should be more of a situational contributor like UP. Sometimes UP is only needed for 5-10 minutes. But when Vescovi is “assessed” (as Jarnigan would say) two quick fouls, as deep as TN is, they start running out of options at PG.

 

[aaronvol]

How dare you be reasonable.

 

[walkenvol]

Good thread BTO! Only point I don’t agree with is recommending UP not focus all his rebounding attention on blocking out Tshiebwe. Uros isn’t a great rebounder without playing against a rebounding machine like Tshiebwe. I like our rebounding odds better if UP neutralizes Tshiebwe and allows the other 4 guys to rebound against KY’s other 4. Problem was our other 4 didn’t rebound well. JMO

 

[BigOrangeFanatic]

It'll be interesting to see how this team responds.

We came out and punched UK in the mouth to start the game. Got up 8-0 and it really looked like we thought they were gonna lay down and quit by the way we played out the rest of the game. The energy and focus just was not there after we got up quick. They seemed to play a little harder in the second half but when the focus isn't there all game long like it should be, it leads to what we saw in this game. Easy misses, break downs in the rebounding game, etc.

There's only 2 ways to go from here. Lock back in go on the road and get a couple Ws against a couple of quality opponents in LSU and Miss St. Or let this funk hang around. This loss was unacceptable given the situation for where we are and where UK is...but it's why you play the game.

 

[walkenvol]

I’m wondering how bad is LSU?

 

[Brentwoodvolfan]

Hey BTO I'm not big on blaming refs but it really seemed like watching game they were killing us every time with stupid fouls, and that was killing our offensive flow. We just never seemed to get a good flow going because of fouls and way refs were calling game. There were bad calls both ways but refs really screwed with this game. Thoughts??

 

[SmokeyLives]

Awaka played some solid minutes in the first half and never saw the floor in the 2nd half. Hard to understand why CRB would not play the kid more. He continues to show out.

 

[birdie74]

You hit the nail on the head about ZZ. When March comes, it's guard play that normally carries the day. Love ZZ but when we get up against teams with solid guards, my concern meter buzzes loudly. Also, going along with JJJs comments about UK wanting it more, that goes hand in hand with rebounding. It's a matter of want to. This team will live and die by defense and rebounding. "Want to" has to be there every night or we'll pay the price. My biggest concern is the apparent lack of want to in a game against UK at home and on Loftons big day. Hard for me to get my head wrapped around that.

I don’t think “want to” is the issue here. The Vols had more steals, more blocks, more assists and a higher shooting percentage. Not sure these would be in our favor if the “want to” was missing. Missed layups, FT disparity, and rebounding were the keys. Sometimes rebounds just don’t go your way even though you block out well, etc.
Let’s see what we do in Starkville. The Bulldogs will be looking for revenge after they were demolished a few weeks ago…

 

[Volfan1000]

1. Sorry for the delay, but had to avoid this place for ~24 hours, the crazies were out in full force and it was a waste of time to try to put together anything level headed to read because it would just fall on deaf ears. I will still probably avoid this place for a bit judging by the posts I’m still seeing but wanted to get up a postgame report. First and foremost, losing sucks, especially to a rival and a team that is unranked currently, add in Lofton’s Day and it really is a shame and I get the emotions being high. With that said, things happen in basketball over a long season as well and it’s best not to overreact to a single game, that doesn’t mean just ignore it either though.

2. Shoutout to Uros, he played his best game in orange and even if Cal said postgame that was essentially their plan that still was a nice offensive showing from him. His rebounding wasn’t good, nobody other than maybe JJJ rebounded well though and that’s biggest reason we lost the game. I thought Uros spend too much time/energy locating and face boxing out Oscar rather than just attacking the rebound with max effort, to me seems like that would have been a better strategy.

3. Rebounding & missed layup are why we lost that game, plain and simple…do either of those things and we win, do both of them and we probably win pretty handily. IIIRC it was 6 missed layups that are probably 90%> hit rates, that’s 12 points right there that we cost ourselves. As for rebounding, Kentucky rebounded 25% of their misses while we got just 7% of our misses, even those numbers up a bit and you’re talking a 9-10 point swing as well at least. Never mind that Kentucky scored about 6-7 more points from the FT line than expected given their season average %. All that to say that while we did play a slower style and didn’t shoot well from 3, we also failed to execute in other areas of the game and that is what cost us. We played good defense for the most part and we got ourselves some really good looks at the basket, we still did enough to win that game, but didn’t execute.

4. I don’t want to blast college kids so I’ll just mention a few negatives overall, but really thought Zeigler, Nkamhoua & Phillips struggled mightily today. Ziegler’s missed layups killed us and he had some other ill advised shots as well, 3-12 from the field isn’t what we need from him, not sure if it was the knee or pressure of wearing #5 or just a bad game, but given our PG situation we are in a bad spot if he’s playing a bad game. Nkamhoua was just flat out a no show, I’ll put partial blame on Barnes for not giving him minutes at the 5 as he couldn’t play the 4 in this game against Toppin or Reeves, they are just too quick, but I doubt he could’ve handled Oscar’s strength either, but wouldn’t have minded seeing us pull him away from the basket with Nkamhoua outside shot. Phillips is a true freshman so not gonna say much there, but if any NBA scouts were watching (they were) they didn’t come away from that one thinking there’s a 1st round pick, that’s for sure.

5. Overall this isn’t a huge loss or bad loss so long as the team/staff takes away some lessons, improves and goes and win some games. We weren’t going 18-0 in league play so now just go win some games and see what happens, we still get Bama and Texas at home 2 games that would make up for this L, take advantage. These next 3 SEC games are very winnable, 2 being road games, go 3-0 heading into the Texas matchup at home and see where things stand. Projections still have us at 26-5(15-3) which would still have us very much in 1/2 seed territory along with Top 2 for SEC regular season as well. We still sit at #2 on KenPom & Barttorvik, the defense is elite still and the offense took a hit…we aren’t gonna score 80+ every night especially when a team slows it down like Kentucky, but you gotta take advantage of layups in a low possession game like that, the room for error is so much small.


GBO!!!

We always have a tough time against Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge so I am not counting that game as a sure dub and the Colorado and Kentucky losses hopefully showed this squad that they have to win or stay even in the rebpunding column to be able to win games when the shots are not falling with regualarity on any given day or night.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

We always have a tough time against Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge so I am not counting that game as a sure dub and the Colorado and Kentucky losses hopefully showed this squad that they have to win or stay even in the rebpunding column to be able to win games when the shots are not falling with regualarity on any given day or night.

We need to bring Carlus Groves and Doug Roth to sit behind our bench.

 

[Volfan1000]

We need to bring Carlus Groves and Doug Roth to sit behind our bench.

Groves battling Shaq and frustrating him and Dale Brown and Roth giving the LSU student body/fans a middle finger salute and Dan Federmann with the last second tip in as the final horn sounded are all great memories in this rivalry.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Groves battling Shaq and frustrating him and Dale Brown and Roth giving the LSU student body/fans a middle finger salute and Dan Federmann with the last second tip in as the final horn sounded are all great memories in this rivalry.

I was going to include Big Dan - but RIP.

 

[Lukusw]

1. Sorry for the delay, but had to avoid this place for ~24 hours, the crazies were out in full force and it was a waste of time to try to put together anything level headed to read because it would just fall on deaf ears. I will still probably avoid this place for a bit judging by the posts I’m still seeing but wanted to get up a postgame report. First and foremost, losing sucks, especially to a rival and a team that is unranked currently, add in Lofton’s Day and it really is a shame and I get the emotions being high. With that said, things happen in basketball over a long season as well and it’s best not to overreact to a single game, that doesn’t mean just ignore it either though.

2. Shoutout to Uros, he played his best game in orange and even if Cal said postgame that was essentially their plan that still was a nice offensive showing from him. His rebounding wasn’t good, nobody other than maybe JJJ rebounded well though and that’s biggest reason we lost the game. I thought Uros spend too much time/energy locating and face boxing out Oscar rather than just attacking the rebound with max effort, to me seems like that would have been a better strategy.

3. Rebounding & missed layup are why we lost that game, plain and simple…do either of those things and we win, do both of them and we probably win pretty handily. IIIRC it was 6 missed layups that are probably 90%> hit rates, that’s 12 points right there that we cost ourselves. As for rebounding, Kentucky rebounded 25% of their misses while we got just 7% of our misses, even those numbers up a bit and you’re talking a 9-10 point swing as well at least. Never mind that Kentucky scored about 6-7 more points from the FT line than expected given their season average %. All that to say that while we did play a slower style and didn’t shoot well from 3, we also failed to execute in other areas of the game and that is what cost us. We played good defense for the most part and we got ourselves some really good looks at the basket, we still did enough to win that game, but didn’t execute.

4. I don’t want to blast college kids so I’ll just mention a few negatives overall, but really thought Zeigler, Nkamhoua & Phillips struggled mightily today. Ziegler’s missed layups killed us and he had some other ill advised shots as well, 3-12 from the field isn’t what we need from him, not sure if it was the knee or pressure of wearing #5 or just a bad game, but given our PG situation we are in a bad spot if he’s playing a bad game. Nkamhoua was just flat out a no show, I’ll put partial blame on Barnes for not giving him minutes at the 5 as he couldn’t play the 4 in this game against Toppin or Reeves, they are just too quick, but I doubt he could’ve handled Oscar’s strength either, but wouldn’t have minded seeing us pull him away from the basket with Nkamhoua outside shot. Phillips is a true freshman so not gonna say much there, but if any NBA scouts were watching (they were) they didn’t come away from that one thinking there’s a 1st round pick, that’s for sure.

5. Overall this isn’t a huge loss or bad loss so long as the team/staff takes away some lessons, improves and goes and win some games. We weren’t going 18-0 in league play so now just go win some games and see what happens, we still get Bama and Texas at home 2 games that would make up for this L, take advantage. These next 3 SEC games are very winnable, 2 being road games, go 3-0 heading into the Texas matchup at home and see where things stand. Projections still have us at 26-5(15-3) which would still have us very much in 1/2 seed territory along with Top 2 for SEC regular season as well. We still sit at #2 on KenPom & Barttorvik, the defense is elite still and the offense took a hit…we aren’t gonna score 80+ every night especially when a team slows it down like Kentucky, but you gotta take advantage of layups in a low possession game like that, the room for error is so much small.


GBO!!!

I really appreciate the levelheaded reply. I avoided here for 24hrs as well. I agree with everything you said.

1. KY played closer to their skill level than they had in a while
2. Missed layups were wierd. We might goose 1-2 /game in the future but not the 6-7 we did Saturday.
3. Our defense was fine-- not perfect, but fine.
4. Turnovers really damaged our first half and let them back in the game
5. Rebounding was the most important stat of the game.

I'm amazed being outrebounded by 20, missing 6-7 bunnies, the free throw discrepancy (and they shot way over season average, just like AZ did against us-- we really need to improve our defense on free throws!), and shooting blindfolded from 3 that we still were right there. A disappointing loss but does not even crack the "worst losses of all time" list

 

[VolunteerCeltic]

This team will be hard pressed to beat KY at Rupp this year

 

[BigOrangeFanatic]

Awaka played some solid minutes in the first half and never saw the floor in the 2nd half. Hard to understand why CRB would not play the kid more. He continues to show out.

He definitely needs more minutes.

 

[MinisterofDef#92]

1. Sorry for the delay, but had to avoid this place for ~24 hours, the crazies were out in full force and it was a waste of time to try to put together anything level headed to read because it would just fall on deaf ears. I will still probably avoid this place for a bit judging by the posts I’m still seeing but wanted to get up a postgame report. First and foremost, losing sucks, especially to a rival and a team that is unranked currently, add in Lofton’s Day and it really is a shame and I get the emotions being high. With that said, things happen in basketball over a long season as well and it’s best not to overreact to a single game, that doesn’t mean just ignore it either though.

2. Shoutout to Uros, he played his best game in orange and even if Cal said postgame that was essentially their plan that still was a nice offensive showing from him. His rebounding wasn’t good, nobody other than maybe JJJ rebounded well though and that’s biggest reason we lost the game. I thought Uros spend too much time/energy locating and face boxing out Oscar rather than just attacking the rebound with max effort, to me seems like that would have been a better strategy.

3. Rebounding & missed layup are why we lost that game, plain and simple…do either of those things and we win, do both of them and we probably win pretty handily. IIIRC it was 6 missed layups that are probably 90%> hit rates, that’s 12 points right there that we cost ourselves. As for rebounding, Kentucky rebounded 25% of their misses while we got just 7% of our misses, even those numbers up a bit and you’re talking a 9-10 point swing as well at least. Never mind that Kentucky scored about 6-7 more points from the FT line than expected given their season average %. All that to say that while we did play a slower style and didn’t shoot well from 3, we also failed to execute in other areas of the game and that is what cost us. We played good defense for the most part and we got ourselves some really good looks at the basket, we still did enough to win that game, but didn’t execute.

4. I don’t want to blast college kids so I’ll just mention a few negatives overall, but really thought Zeigler, Nkamhoua & Phillips struggled mightily today. Ziegler’s missed layups killed us and he had some other ill advised shots as well, 3-12 from the field isn’t what we need from him, not sure if it was the knee or pressure of wearing #5 or just a bad game, but given our PG situation we are in a bad spot if he’s playing a bad game. Nkamhoua was just flat out a no show, I’ll put partial blame on Barnes for not giving him minutes at the 5 as he couldn’t play the 4 in this game against Toppin or Reeves, they are just too quick, but I doubt he could’ve handled Oscar’s strength either, but wouldn’t have minded seeing us pull him away from the basket with Nkamhoua outside shot. Phillips is a true freshman so not gonna say much there, but if any NBA scouts were watching (they were) they didn’t come away from that one thinking there’s a 1st round pick, that’s for sure.

5. Overall this isn’t a huge loss or bad loss so long as the team/staff takes away some lessons, improves and goes and win some games. We weren’t going 18-0 in league play so now just go win some games and see what happens, we still get Bama and Texas at home 2 games that would make up for this L, take advantage. These next 3 SEC games are very winnable, 2 being road games, go 3-0 heading into the Texas matchup at home and see where things stand. Projections still have us at 26-5(15-3) which would still have us very much in 1/2 seed territory along with Top 2 for SEC regular season as well. We still sit at #2 on KenPom & Barttorvik, the defense is elite still and the offense took a hit…we aren’t gonna score 80+ every night especially when a team slows it down like Kentucky, but you gotta take advantage of layups in a low possession game like that, the room for error is so much small.


GBO!!!

Great write up as usual. For #2, UP face guarding Oscar falls on the coaching staff imo (either that was the game plan and other players didn't step up OR the coaches chose not to correct it). For #4, ON not showing up really hurt us but we know he struggles rebounding...wish Awaka had gotten more of his minutes. 100% on #5...as many issues as we had we still had a chance at the end of the game. Still a lot of b-ball left to play and I still think we have not peaked as a team - just need to make some adjustments and continue to improve. GBO

 

[MinisterofDef#92]

Thanks, BTO. You always put things in perspective. Yesterday certainly wasn’t a season-ender by any means. It was an ugly loss, but we’re still in position. I think the biggest disappointment was just the fact that it was Lofton Day, which made emotions run high. But, that’s why all week I said I just had a weird/bad feeling about the game. Things just felt primed for a let down after the UK loss to Carolina.

Overall, this team is still good, but with how Alabama is playing it makes our chances of winning the SEC much slimmer. We can’t really afford to blink again, at least for a few weeks. I guess it’s just time to see where the chips fall and not worry too much about it. Hope we respond on Tuesday.

This. Doesn't matter what sport it is...you can't have the whole media world spend 4 days telling your biggest rival with a team full of elite players they essentially are a huge disappointment and that their coach is about to be ran out of town.

 

[cardvolfan]

This. Doesn't matter what sport it is...you can't have the whole media world spend 4 days telling your biggest rival with a team full of elite players they essentially are a huge disappointment and that their coach is about to be ran out of town.

I’m too old to think we had this one in the bag before tip-off. 24 hours later, I’m encouraged because we had every scenario go wrong, and still, we were just a touch away from winning. With the exception of ON, I think everyone on this team gives their all. I’m not sure why he has these frequent lapses, but at times he shows what I might term almost brilliance. As a senior he is what he is. That lack of effort on two early plays just gutted me. Obviously, it did Barnes as well. I would go with Awaka from here on out with the majority of minutes, because he works his butt off. Funny, I was watching Awaka in the pregame layup line, and he hustles in that line. No joke. He makes his shot, and sprints full-speed back to the opposite line.

 

[morristown vol]

I would rather lose some games along the way to the NCAA tournament if it keeps us hungry.Seems like Barnes teams peak to early.