1. You can look at last nights game a few different ways, probably feel like it shouldn’t have been as close as it was or that we shouldn’t handled a team like Vanderbilt at home. Then you consider though the late Wednesday game in Starkville, having to travel back for quick turnaround, playing an instate rivals that is improving, a team you’ve beaten 9x in a row and is trying to break that streak, and a team that just a weeks ago had UK in a 3pt game at Rupp Arena with about 8 minutes remaining before they went on to win by 7(77-70) and suddenly you feel a just a bit happier to have found a way to win. Tennessee had its moments where they got up 13+ and you thought were gonna pull away and maybe they should have, that’s something they can work on, but still found a way to get the W they really couldn’t afford to lose.
2. Tennessee did not shoot the ball well, which considering how they’ve shot the last few games was probably bound to happy at some point. The good news was that they found a way to win still: rebound, defense, limit turnovers, hit free throws. For the most part those things are pretty controllable and if you do them you’ll have a good chance to win even if you’re having a colder shooting night, on nights you’re hitting shots then it makes you really tough to beat. We weren’t awful from 3 and really it was JJJ’s 1-7 that dragged us down, but the way he’s shot lately you live with that and hope he’s hot the next game.
3. Speaking of JJJ, the man could not buy a shot from the field 2-14fg and 1-7 from 3…but he had 10 rebounds, 2 blocks and was against huge for our defense. Him staying aggressive offensively was good to see, it’s what this team needs to be it’s best offensively and he was getting good looks, sometimes you just have a cold night but it was good to see him continue to look to score and even drive it to the hoop aggressively.
4. I made a post yesterday asking is ZZ a 6th MOY candidate? He likely doesn’t win it, Tari Eason is a great player and UK has a good candidate as well in Davion Mintz, but ZZ made his case against last night. Ends up with 2nd most minutes on the team, 16pts 5ast 0t, over his last 6 games he’s 15/27 for 56% from 3 after starting the year cold. We heard he’s a phenomenal shooter and early in the year there were some doubts, but maybe it was adjusting to speed or length of game at this level but man is he shooting it of late. Regardless, he’s playing really well obviously and continues to make Vol fans excited about the future.
5. My negative is foul trouble…this team has had a habit of late getting itself into foul trouble, mainly the guards, and that is becoming a trend and in issue. Vescovi does it quite a bit and tonight Chandler joined him, both of those guys are too important to this team to be riding the bench, they’ve gotta play smarter…same for ZZ and JJJ, they were fine last night but have had their recent foul troubles too, those 4 guys have to be better. With Vescovi on the court we were +21 yesterday, without him we were -12, he’s great offensively, another ball handler, great passer, underrated defender and really spaces the floor with his shooting ability, we need him out there along with the other guards. We talk about wanting to play small ball 4+1 and that it’s our best grouping, but that’s hard to do if 1-2 of your guards are in foul trouble nightly.
6. During this stretch they’ve also seemingly picked things up on the offensive end, averaging 79ppg in that span and seeing their offensive rating on KenPom rise from around 55 post Texas to Top 30 as of today. It’s widely considered that to be a balanced and one of the better teams you need to be Top 25 in both categories, and a couple weeks ago that seemed near impossible a goal for this Vols team to reach offensively, but they’ve really picked it up and is a big part of the win streak. The defense needs to stick around because it’s carries on the road and with you game to game, but continue to play with that offensive movement and pace and let it keep flying from 3 when you have those open looks. Would be nice to see the O climb into the Top 20 while defense remains Top 10, would make us among the Top 8-10 on KenPom and indicate we are really playing well.
7. Big picture reset…we entered this 4 game stretch predicted to go 3-1, said that would be solid but if you found a way to go 4-0 it would really build some momentum and possibly change the trajectory of this team. Well they went 4-0 and are building momentum, they’re climbing bracket seed lists and are a fringe 3/4 seed as of this morning, they’ve really positioned themselves well with some big upcoming opportunities, but that also means things get tougher. We are 18-6(9-3) with 6 remaining, you hope 3-3 is the floor and 4-2 would feel good, anything better would be amazing and anything less than 3-3 would really be disappointing finish. We start the first week with 2 Q1 opportunities, home against Kentucky and on the road at Arkansas, both of these are going to be tough games and require great showings, true 50/50 games…splitting these 2 would be considered a good thing. I’m really hoping we see TBA rocking and that we can start out the week with a W against Kentucky, would take some pressure off heading to Arkansas and would make the race for 2nd place a bit more interesting as well, would also get some national recognition…not to mention we owe them one!
GBO!!!
