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No team in the country ran fewer plays than Tennessee last season. The Vols had 716 snaps in 12 games, 59.7 per contest. Maryland was next with 728 snaps. Tennessee also flirted with last place in this category in 2017 – 732 snaps, 125th nationally – but the offense did […]
Last summer we looked at five ways Tennessee could show the most improvement in 2018. As was the case with much of last season, progress was present but not in a hurry: Tennessee improved its third down conversation rate from 30.67% to 38.22%, but the other four categories still have […]
Ten years ago at Rocky Top Talk, we asked you to pick your all-decade team for Tennessee Basketball. Chris Lofton was an automatic qualifier, and we went from there with these nominees: Point Guard: Tony Harris, C.J. Watson Perimeter: Vincent Yarbrough, Scooter McFadgon, JaJuan Smith Post: Isaiah Victor, Marcus Haislip, […]
May is often the longest month for college football fans. And around here, this May falls in place behind the quietest spring practice I can remember. Basketball continues to own an unusual percentage of the conversation; it comes with the territory of the third-highest paying contract in the game and […]
Ken Pomeroy’s data goes back to 2002; it’s a clean starting line for Tennessee basketball, as that was Buzz Peterson’s first year. We love history around here, and it’s fun to use the KenPom data to compare what the Vols have done over these last 18 seasons. Among Tennessee teams, […]
It’s fine by me to keep talking about basketball, even though Tuesday’s press conference raised eyebrows instead of what I’m sure was the intended alternative. Rick Barnes, perhaps honest to a fault in this case, said he’d probably be the coach at UCLA if the Bruins worked out his buyout […]
Isn’t this the quietest spring practice you can remember? It lacks the shiny new things that tend to make the most noise this time of year – new coach, new quarterback – and even the new offensive coordinator isn’t really new. Tennessee’s freshmen most likely to make an impact are […]
The last sentence of the last thing I wrote about Tennessee on Friday was, “There is as much reason to believe in Tennessee basketball right now than at any point in my lifetime.” This was immediately tested, of course. The point of that piece on Friday was to not pretend […]
Starting with the regular season finale against the Vols, Auburn hit 108 threes in eight consecutive games – a ridiculous 13.5 per – including 15 against Tennessee in the SEC Tournament Championship and 17 against North Carolina in the Sweet 16. Then they beat Kentucky while hitting only 7-of-23 (30.4%) […]
It’s a credit to what Rick Barnes and these players have built that, in the immediate aftermath of Purdue’s win, I could google 2020 NCAA Tournament sites with a straight face. (The regions aren’t friendly – New York, LA, Indianapolis, and Houston – but the Final Four is in Atlanta.) […]