Style of Play

#1
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windycityvol

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#1
I love Bruce Pearl and let me start off by saying that I appreciate everything he has done for Tennessee basketball and hope to see him stay for a long time.

That being said, I despise the "controlled chaos" style of basketball he teaches. I'm not saying he is an idiot or a bad in-game coach, I just do not enjoy the style of basketball they play.

He knows what he is doing and he certainly gets results with his up tempo scheme, but I guess I just prefer a more fundamentally sound team. Every team he has had since he has been here has severely lacked basic basketball IQ and it constantly drives me nuts and I hate the stigma that if you play a fast paced game you can't still play smart.

My favorite example would be Illinois in 04-05 when they were runner-ups. That team played a very up tempo type game, but they were also fundamentally sound, which allowed them to adapt in games where teams tried to slow them down.

Granted that team had much stronger guard play than we have ever had, but they weren't any more talented than our 07-08 team or last year's squad.

Bruce gets the job done and we are lucky to have him in orange, but sometimes his style of play is downright brutal to watch. Hey, whatever gets the job done I suppose.
 
#2
#2
windycityvol said:
I love Bruce Pearl and let me start off by saying that I appreciate everything he has done for Tennessee basketball and hope to see him stay for a long time.

That being said, I despise the "controlled chaos" style of basketball he teaches. I'm not saying he is an idiot or a bad in-game coach, I just do not enjoy the style of basketball they play.

He knows what he is doing and he certainly gets results with his up tempo scheme, but I guess I just prefer a more fundamentally sound team. Every team he has had since he has been here has severely lacked basic basketball IQ and it constantly drives me nuts and I hate the stigma that if you play a fast paced game you can't still play smart.

My favorite example would be Illinois in 04-05 when they were runner-ups. That team played a very up tempo type game, but they were also fundamentally sound, which allowed them to adapt in games where teams tried to slow them down.

Granted that team had much stronger guard play than we have ever had, but they weren't any more talented than our 07-08 team or last year's squad.

Bruce gets the job done and we are lucky to have him in orange, but sometimes his style of play is downright brutal to watch. Hey, whatever gets the job done I suppose.
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Did you post this in 2008, and it just now appeared due to some internet glitch?
 
#5
#5
StepCross said:
Did you post this in 2008, and it just now appeared due to some internet glitch?
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I laughed.

I'm not trying to say that it is a new issue with CBP's teams, but it's easy to let it go when we are winning. Then 5 game stretches like this that make me want to vomit bring it all back again.
 
#6
#6
We don't press all the time anymore. In fact I notice it only a couple times a game. Controlled chaos is no more.
 
#7
#7
Where were our big men tonight? The little 6-3 guys just out hustled us. That is abominable. Where was Williams?
I can excuse poor shooting, but letting a small team like this out rebound you every time they throw up a shot is inexcusable.
 
#8
#8
windycityvol said:
I laughed.

I'm not trying to say that it is a new issue with CBP's teams, but it's easy to let it go when we are winning. Then 5 game stretches like this that make me want to vomit bring it all back again.
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I hear ya. It's rough to see for sure. Pearl is no longer getting it done IMHO. Hope we just don't hang on to mediocrity too long like we did in football with Phil Failmer.
 
#9
#9
"Controlled chaos" is hardly what I would call our recent efforts. How about "lackadaisical confusion?"
 
#10
#10
windycityvol said:
I laughed.

I'm not trying to say that it is a new issue with CBP's teams, but it's easy to let it go when we are winning. Then 5 game stretches like this that make me want to vomit bring it all back again.
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I think you missed his point
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#11
#11
tvols75 said:
I think you missed his point
Posted via VolNation Mobile
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No I got it. We don't press anymore and we haven't deemed it "controlled chaos" for quite some time so it makes me sound stupid and out of date, but what I meant was that a lot of the same offensive philosophies are still in place.

Shot selection is such a relative term in a Bruce Pearl offense, as well as the decision on when and when not to push (I have seen Melvin push the tempo with a severe lack of numbers several times this year.)

Then Bruce runs his flex so high, that we got guards trying to start the offense from 35 feet away from the basket and it's a real waste of floor space imo. We run through 2 flex cuts and then have to make something happen off the bounce with 10 on the shot clock, it's just frustrating.

I get that we don't trap the inbound and press like we used too, so it's not technically "controlled chaos." I misspoke, he made fun of me. I laughed. I get it.
 
#12
#12
windycityvol said:
Every team he has had since he has been here has severely lacked basic basketball IQ and it constantly drives me nuts and I hate the stigma that if you play a fast paced game you can't still play smart.
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I don't think every Pearl team has struggled with this, and I think the turnover percentages and shooting percentages bear that out in certain years.

But putting aside quibbling over details, I don't think pace has anything to do with the problem. I think Pearl has a philosophy of allowing his players to make mistakes, and play through them. A guy like Kevin O'Neill would either run off JP Prince or bench him indefinitely or else berate him into playing Kevin's way.

Bruce isn't going to do that. He believes he can get more out of them in the long run if he allows them to be creative, take chances, and learn from their own mistakes.

After 5 and a half years, I believe his method works wonders for some players and falls flat with others. I do think it allows for higher highs and lower lows than the hard-core my-way method...witness a 20-point blowout loss to a bad USC team last year, followed soon by a beating of Kansas with walkons.

Or witness beating Villanova and Pitt, and then turning around and losing to Charlotte.

It's starting to look like this team doesn't handle that kind of freedom very well, but OTOH they did utterly spank Pittsburgh, so who knows.
 
#13
#13
StepCross said:
I don't think every Pearl team has struggled with this, and I think the turnover percentages and shooting percentages bear that out in certain years.

But putting aside quibbling over details, I don't think pace has anything to do with the problem. I think Pearl has a philosophy of allowing his players to make mistakes, and play through them. A guy like Kevin O'Neill would either run off JP Prince or bench him indefinitely or else berate him into playing Kevin's way.

Bruce isn't going to do that. He believes he can get more out of them in the long run if he allows them to be creative, take chances, and learn from their own mistakes.

After 5 and a half years, I believe his method works wonders for some players and falls flat with others. I do think it allows for higher highs and lower lows than the hard-core my-way method...witness a 20-point blowout loss to a bad USC team last year, followed soon by a beating of Kansas with walkons.

Or witness beating Villanova and Pitt, and then turning around and losing to Charlotte.

It's starting to look like this team doesn't handle that kind of freedom very well, but OTOH they did utterly spank Pittsburgh, so who knows.
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The win over Pitt is looking more and more like one of those "Oh, look. The Knicks beat Dallas. How cute." games, on a collegiate scale.
 
#14
#14
hatvol96 said:
The win over Pitt is looking more and more like one of those "Oh, look. The Knicks beat Dallas. How cute." games, on a collegiate scale.
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From the outside looking in, that's definitely true.

But I don't believe that's actually what it was, because (a) I actually saw the game, and it wasn't a fluky-looking win; and (b) Pearl's teams have a pattern of showing up for the big ones, and not necessarily for the little ones.
 
#15
#15
Like I said it's difficult to argue with success, but it is also brutal to watch imo. Even in our years with JaJuan Smith and Chris Lofton when our turnover margins were heavily skewed in our favor, there were a lot of mental lapses where basic principles escaped them.

Such as overextending themselves defensively in a possession by possession defensive situation, like being up 7 or 8 points with a couple minutes left and getting called for a reach 30 feet from the basket, or taking a contested pull up 3 in transition with 30 seconds left on the clock and no post players with inside position.

Those things happen in every program, but having grown up watching Lon Kruger, Bill Self, and Bruce Weber coached Illini teams, as well as Tennessee and Bruce Pearl coached UWM teams (when Pearl and Jimmy Collins were battling in the Horizon League), it happens a lot more on Pearl teams than normal.

I get that Pearl allows them a certain freedom and like you said, some players simply respond better than that. If that makes Tennessee basketball successful, then that's great and I don't mean to sound like I hate Pearl. I am just saying the tactical side of me struggles to watch it without pulling my hair out lol.

You got one thing right for sure, the highs are certainly high and the lows are certainly low with a Bruce Pearl team.
 
#16
#16
This team is playing very similar to the one last year...got the Memphis win had the suspensions and Tyler Smith removed and then turned into an Elite 8 team. This team has already shown it can play with the top tier teams. We need leadership and we need to make our shots. Defense is pretty solid.
 
#17
#17
StepCross said:
From the outside looking in, that's definitely true.

But I don't believe that's actually what it was, because (a) I actually saw the game, and it wasn't a fluky-looking win; and (b) Pearl's teams have a pattern of showing up for the big ones, and not necessarily for the little ones.
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I was sitting on press row. Tennessee played great, but most of it fed off their shooting. It is becoming readily apparent that's not something they can count on to any degree. Pitt also missed more than a few open jumpers. They hit those against UCONN Monday night. A UT-Pitt rematch isn't something I'd be excited about seeing right now.
 
#18
#18
hatvol96 said:
Tennessee played great, but most of it fed off their shooting.
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You think? Their 3-point percentage was tight, but they only attempted 11. They actually out-rebounded Pitt, who is one of the top rebounding teams nationally. They got to the line, and forced Pitt into taking poor shots. They blocked 7 of Pitt's shots.

And Pitt shot 41% from the arc, can't really call that a bad shooting night.

Maybe it was fluky and maybe it wasn't, but Tennessee hasn't played with that kind of energy since that night.
 
#19
#19
Another major issue with this squad in particular is identity, especially offensively. What is this basketball team?

Last year, even with the highs and lows I think we knew who we were. We were a team that aggresively pursued the JP Prince backcut from the flex, and tried to establish Wayne on the block while playing good defense and getting the break started when possible.

This year it's obvious that we want to get the ball into Scotty and Tobias' hands, but I get the sense we don't know how to do that other than to let them start from 20+ feet out and force them to create their own shot.

Scotty needs to be getting the ball on the wing with space more often and imo we should look to offer him the occasional ball screen to force the d to hedge every once in awhile. Tobias needs to be getting catches at the elbow where he can bury that 15 footer over smaller 4's and blow by the bigger ones.

Hopefully we begin to figure some of this stuff out offensively, and soon.
 
#21
#21
hatvol96 said:
They haven't hit perimeter shots since then. I sense a correlation.
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No doubt, if we can't hit from the perimeter than we aren't going to do much offensively. That is fact. We have no post game. Brian Williams isn't striking fear into an opponent down low and neither are any of the other guys. We don't have that Wayne Chism this year so we are a little more reliant on that perimeter shot. There is no reason that a player with a nice shot like Scotty and Cam have to not hit them consistently when they are so wide open. It would be one thing if they are contested, but a lot of times they just flat out miss. I think there is also a correlation between offensive confidence and defensive results for this team. Scotty is a lot more motivated on the defensive end more times than not when his shot is falling.
 
#22
#22
hatvol96 said:
They haven't hit perimeter shots since then. I sense a correlation.
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Looks like we've pretty much taken a break from gameplanning as well. The defensive plan on handling Pitt's ball screen offense was fantastic. Every game since then, our opponents have been able to run their offense easily.
 
#23
#23
LawVol13 said:
Looks like we've pretty much taken a break from gameplanning as well. The defensive plan on handling Pitt's ball screen offense was fantastic. Every game since then, our opponents have been able to run their offense easily.
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Yeah, I think this is a relic from Pearl's pressing days. When he pressed, he could stomp the bad teams into submission with no plan at all because they couldn't handle the pressure. Then he could save the creative tactics and careful scouting for the big opponents.

I think this is one of the main things biting us during this stretch: Pearl is trying to sneak out the victories without putting in much in the way of game-planning. It's not working as well as he had hoped, methinks.

And it doesn't help that they're playing so flat, and missing shots to boot.
 
#24
#24
StepCross said:
Yeah, I think this is a relic from Pearl's pressing days. When he pressed, he could stomp the bad teams into submission with no plan at all because they couldn't handle the pressure. Then he could save the creative tactics and careful scouting for the big opponents.

I think this is one of the main things biting us during this stretch: Pearl is trying to sneak out the victories without putting in much in the way of game-planning. It's not working as well as he had hoped, methinks.

And it doesn't help that they're playing so flat, and missing shots to boot.
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What? So you think there was no plan at all during the pressing days vs. weaker teams? And that Pearl and staff are not game-planning much now. Tell me you don't believe that.
 
#25
#25
tvols75 said:
What? So you think there was no plan at all during the pressing days vs. weaker teams? And that Pearl and staff are not game-planning much now. Tell me you don't believe that.
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I think that during the pressing days they staff knew very well that they didn't have to plan for Prairie View A&M. We were going to run them into the ground 100-50 no matter what.

So, the staff would plan ahead for Texas or Memphis or Florida, try to blindside them with defenses and offenses, and basically just roll out the ball in the meantime.

Absolutely I think that.

I mean, sure, they put together an offensive and defensive plan, but I believe it's pretty vanilla. The really good film-watching and game-planning and detailed scouting they save for the "name" opponents.
 
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