Author Archives: Will Shelton

What are the most dominant regular seasons in UT’s modern era?

Tennessee’s baseball team begins its final regular season series today at Mississippi State. The defending national champs have struggled this season, 9-18 in league play and fighting to make the SEC Tournament next week. Meanwhile, Tennessee already clinched the SEC title at 22-5, five games up on Arkansas. The Vols are 45-7 overall, the only team in the Top 25 (and, I assume, the nation) with single-digit losses on the year.

We looked last week at the relevant history this baseball team is chasing. It can feel a bit this week like history is the only remaining prize until postseason play begins. But there’s plenty of that to go around, starting with:

Most SEC Regular Season wins (Current 30-game format, 1996-2022)

  1. 26 – 2013 Vanderbilt
  2. 25 – 2000 South Carolina
  3. 23 – 2019 Vanderbilt
  4. 22 – 2022 Tennessee (tied with eight others, three games to play)

Avoid getting swept, and the Vols will have one of the three best regular season records in the SEC in the last 26 years. Sweep the Bulldogs, and the Vols will tie South Carolina for the second-best regular season record in that span.

An obvious truth that bears repeating here: the SEC is good. Like, really good. So anytime you win it – not just in baseball, but in any sport – you celebrate like crazy.

The Vols earned their third SEC regular season championship since 1994 and just their fourth ever. Those Todd Helton teams that went back-to-back in ’94 and ’95 won the SEC by 2 and 1.5 games respectively. The current squad is up five with three to play. There could be more available history here too:

SEC Baseball Largest Championship Margin (Current format)

  1. 5.5 games – 2000 South Carolina
  2. 5 games – 2022 Tennessee (three to play)
  3. 4 games – 2007 Vanderbilt
  4. 3.5 games – 2013 Vanderbilt

Again: celebrate this team because it won the SEC Championship, because that’s incredibly hard to do by itself! But in the midst of that, we’re seeing one of the best regular seasons of any SEC team in the last three decades…which automatically makes it one of the best regular seasons we’ve ever seen on this campus.

In the five biggest sports on campus, here’s how hard it is to win an SEC title:

Tennessee’s SEC Championships since 1980

  • Football: 5 SEC Championships since 1985
  • Men’s Basketball: 4 SEC Championships since 1982
  • Baseball: 3 SEC Championships since 1994
  • Softball: 1 SEC Championship in 2007

Wait for it:

  • Women’s Basketball: 18 SEC Championships since 1980

Okay, hard for almost everyone. That’s 18 for Lady Vol basketball, 13 for the other four biggest sports combined. Word.

So this baseball team is already on a short list on campus, one worthy of celebration no matter what happens in the postseason. Just how high up that list might they go?

Again: the SEC is good. It’s hard to win championships, and even with your best-of-the-best teams, the margins are thin. We often speak of this when some of our very best teams – most recently 2019 men’s basketball – happen to coincide with some of the very best teams at other schools in the same year. The Grant/Admiral ’19 squad went 15-3 in the SEC – two games better than the previous year’s league champions – but LSU went 16-2. See also Spurrier, Steve, etc.

When the Vols have won those regular season championships, it wasn’t easy even with our very best teams. Consider the margins for those champions:

Football

  • 1985: Tied Florida at 5-1, Gators on probation (Florida won head-to-head 17-10)
  • 1989: Three-way-tie with Alabama & Auburn (Vols beat Auburn, Auburn beat Bama, Bama beat Vols)
  • 1990: Florida 6-1, Vols 5-1-1, Gators on probation (Vols won head-to-head 45-3)
  • 1997: SEC East Vols 7-1, Florida & UGA 6-2. Vols beat Auburn 30-29 in Atlanta.
  • 1998: SEC East Vols 8-0, Florida 7-1. Vols beat Mississippi State 24-14 in Atlanta.

With the exception of 1998, every one of those championships was a margin of one game or a split title. The ’98 Vols had the minimum two-game cushion an undefeated season provides in the division, but that was an elite Florida squad we almost saw again in the Fiesta Bowl. And nothing was ever easy for us in the Georgia Dome. Winning is hard.

Men’s Basketball

  • 1982: Tied with Kentucky
  • 2000: Four-way-tie with Florida, Kentucky & LSU
  • 2008: Vols 14-2, two games over Kentucky & Mississippi State at 12-4
  • 2018: Tied with Auburn

Here again, only one of these outcomes had any cushion whatsoever. The 2008 Vols lost at Rupp Arena, and fell to Memorial Magic in the ultimate trap game. Their KenPom rating isn’t as high as the 2019 (or 2022) teams, but they secured the program’s only outright SEC title in my lifetime. Winning is hard!

Baseball

  • 1994: Won by 2 games
  • 1995: Won by 1.5 games
  • 2022: Up 5 with 3 to play

Softball

  • 2007: Swept a double-header vs Alabama on the last day of the regular season to win

Winning is hard!

You have the opportunity for larger margins with more games being played, of course, so a dominant baseball or softball team can look stronger just by the margin. But as we’ve seen, only three SEC baseball teams have won the regular season title by more than three games in the last 26 years. In softball, that 2007 team featured Monica Abbott and was a 10-inning loss away from a national championship. But they needed the final day of the season to win the SEC title.

The ultimate conversation about “best team ever” will be heavily influenced by what happens in the postseason, and rightfully so. But right now, I think you’d put this baseball team on a very, very short list…and one that’s doing to include lots of:

Women’s Basketball

Consider that the Lady Vols won the SEC regular season title by at least three games 10 times from 1995-2011 under Pat Summitt. The record there actually belongs to that 2011 squad: a 16-0 regular season champ, five games ahead of the field. They also won the SEC Tournament, before falling to Notre Dame in the Elite Eight.

Tennessee also won the regular season title by four games in 1998, 2004, and 2010. It’s that ’98 squad that will lead the way in any conversation about dominance: 39-0, with a third straight national championship. I count three single-digit wins in those 39 games: the regular season and SEC Tournament matchups with Alabama, and the Elite Eight comeback over North Carolina. So yeah: the dominance of that group may not be threatened in our lifetimes.

But as we move to the end of the regular season, this baseball team has put themselves in position to enter the holy of holies on campus. It is no exaggeration to put their regular season dominance in the conversation with 1998 football, 2008 men’s basketball, and a host of Lady Vol squads. If they continue to live into their number one ranking, we’ll continue to enjoy riding some outrageous trains of thought about the best teams to ever do it on this campus.

There is lots of fun left to be had here.

Go Vols.

Let It Fly.

Two years ago, Grant Williams entered Game 7 against Toronto with seven minutes to play. This was in the bubble, where things felt like they mattered more because there were fewer other sports to matter at the time. Gordon Hayward was hurt, and Daniel Theis was in foul trouble, so Williams got the call late. He fouled out Kyle Lowry, then missed both free throws, then got a piece of Fred VanVleet’s final three to secure a Boston win. If you’re a Vols & Celtics fan like me, it helped exorcise a demon or two from some Ryan Cline threes that just missed his fingertips.

Grant played 11.5 minutes per game in that second round series, just under 10 in the other two rounds. He played 11.4 in the opening round loss to Brooklyn last season.

And if that’s all it ever was, it would’ve been more than what we’ve often had the chance to see with few Tennessee alumni in the league, especially that individual postseason moment. It’s a gift to have former Vols land on championship contenders.

Allan Houston made the playoffs six years in a row from 1996-2001, including a Finals appearance in 1999. But in the last 20 years, only Williams and three others have seen meaningful playoff action. C.J. Watson made four appearances off the bench from 2011-14. Josh Richardson has been four times, but hasn’t made it out of the first round since his rookie year.

Tobias Harris continues to carry the torch for consistency among post-Houston Vols. In an 11-year career, he’s made the playoffs five times, four in a row now with Philadelphia. He averages 37.5 minutes per game in the postseason and 17.5 points. But the Sixers struggle to break through to the conference finals, having been eliminated in round two in three of the past four years. And Tobias also carries our lone one-and-done success torch, at least for the moment, which means he simply didn’t have time to generate the same amount of memories as Watson, Richardson, or Grant.

Grant and his teams led the way on campus in that department. There was always this sense that his jersey would make its way to the rafters as a two-time SEC Player of the Year. When it did, we’d have conversations about Chris Lofton and other local legends.

But in year three with Boston, Grant started becoming more than just a rotation player with a game-saving sequence in Game 7 two years ago. His minutes increased, getting 24.4 per game in the regular season. The Celtics trimmed their rotation after an 18-21 start, then did so again at the trade deadline, and Williams stayed in it. His defense and three-point shooting improved significantly. And Boston surged to the two seed in the Eastern Conference.

When Grant was a rookie, sometimes he’d get switched onto guys like Anthony Davis. It was wild to watch him go against the best in the world, even if for just a possession.

Now, Grant has picked up Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo in consecutive rounds. Not switched onto; he has been their primary defender when they’ve shared the floor.

What you want for your favorite players is opportunity. Allan Houston was an all-star and played on an Olympic team; who knows if any current or future Vols in the NBA will climb that high. C.J. Watson carved out an impressive role as a reliable backup point guard for years, but didn’t always see the floor in closing time. Josh Richardson and Tobias Harris are getting those opportunities, but so far not on teams that have advanced past the second round.

All of a sudden, here’s Grant getting 31 minutes a night in the playoffs. Robert Williams is banged up, and maybe Boston’s ceiling would be higher with him on the floor right now if that wasn’t the case. Al Horford, 35 years old, turned back the clock earlier in the Milwaukee series with 30 points in Game 4. There are other good options.

But increasingly – in the present, not just an idea for the future – Grant Williams is on the floor for Boston’s most important possessions. He’s played his way into the opportunity to make a difference on both ends of the floor.

It’s what Milwaukee invited him to do in Game 7. After Jayson Tatum dropped 46 points in Game 6, the Bucks doubled down on their interior defense, and gave Grant the green light from the outside. You may recall, he started his rookie year by missing 25 consecutive threes.

You may not recall:

He opened the scoring with a three on Boston’s first possession. He would take 17 more before the day was done.

He was 1-for-4 with six minutes left in the first half, and Boston down five. There’s that old basketball truth about wanting a bad shooter to hit their first one, because they’ll keep shooting.

Grant is not a bad shooter.

He hit another, then missed two more to sit at 2-for-7 late in the first half. With 51.9 seconds to go in the half, he splashed one to give Boston a 45-43 lead. The Celtics never trailed again.

In the first minute of the third quarter, he splashed another to give Boston a 10-point lead. He missed a couple more and was 4-for-11 midway through the third, with the Celtics still up 10. Meanwhile, Giannis was still on the other team, and no lead was safe.

As a Celtics fan who has watched Boston try to go through LeBron since 2008, I’m familiar with the dance of trying to beat the best in the world at their best. You need a long series to have a chance to get something like this, but consider this piece of history over the last seven games:

But Giannis had to go through mountains, including Grant, to get those numbers against Boston. In Game 7, he added 25 points and 20 rebounds, just missing a triple-double with 9 assists. But all of that came on just 9-of-26 shooting. The best player in the world won so many battles, but Boston won the war. And in Game 7, Grant helped lead the charge on both ends of the floor.

Up 10, he splashed a three to make it 68-55 midway through the third. Four minutes later he hit another, and the Celtics went up 16. And then, to open the fourth, one more to put Boston up 16 again.

Boston advances to the Eastern Conference Finals. Grant Williams was the leading scorer in Game 7, tying the NBA record for threes made in a Game 7, while being one of the primary defenders on the best player in the world.

All you can ask for is opportunity. You let it fly from there.

The Celtics go to Miami (a fun team to root against if you’re a neutral Vol fan! Tyler Herro! Bam Adebayo! Jimmy Butler taking shots at Tobias!). If he’s healthy, Grant will play in at least 37 playoff games in his first three seasons. That’s almost twice as may as the next closest Vols on the list (Dale Ellis and Josh Richardson with 19 each in their first three seasons). Bernard King played in two playoff games in his first three years. Allan Houston played in three. C.J. Watson didn’t make the playoffs until year four, Tobias not until year five. Nothing is guaranteed. All you can ask for is opportunity.

And it is such a joy, and a gift, to watch Grant make the absolute most of his.

Available History for Tennessee Baseball

A series loss at Kentucky may have slowed the momentum, but the Vols remain number one in three different polls. Seven weeks atop the polls means the baseball program has now spent more time at number one than our men’s basketball program all-time. And Tennessee locked up the SEC East title over the weekend as well.

Much of Tennessee’s chase within itself goes back to the Todd Helton glory days of 1994-95. Those are the program’s last two league championships, and join 1993 as three straight SEC Tournament titles. The Vols are four games up on Arkansas with six to play, closing at home vs Georgia (13-11 SEC) and at Mississippi State (9-15). Arkansas is home vs Vanderbilt (12-12) and at Alabama (10-14). The Vols and Hogs do not meet in the regular season, which will surely make things spicy should we run into each other in the SEC Tournament. But Tennessee not only controls its own destiny to win the league, but can do so at home this weekend via sweep even if Arkansas does the same.

The more interesting history, at least for the next two weeks, is how far up the recent SEC leaderboard this team can climb.

Those 94-95 Vols were the last of an old scheduling model, which saw each SEC team play eight regular season series, then added the SEC Tournament results to the totals to determine the overall league champion (weird!). The Vols finished 24-5 in 1994 and 22-8 in 1995. Since 1996, SEC teams have played a 30-game, 10-series league schedule. The format held through the additions of Missouri and Texas A&M.

The Vols are currently 20-4 in league play. Under the 30-game format, here are the best to ever do it in this league (records via Wikipedia):

SEC Baseball Best Regular Season Records, 1996-2021

YearChampionRecordPct.Finish
2013Vanderbilt26-30.897Super Regionals
2000South Carolina25-50.833Super Regionals
2019Vanderbilt23-70.767National Champs
1997LSU22-70.759National Champs
1999Arkansas22-80.733Regionals
2007Vanderbilt22-80.733Regional Finals
2010Florida22-80.733College World Series
2011FLA, SC, Vandy22-80.733CWS Finals, Champs, CWS
2021Arkansas22-80.733Super Regionals

So a 5-1 finish for Tennessee would tie 2000 South Carolina as the second-best SEC regular season of the last 26 years. Sweep the next two weekends, and the Vols will tie 2013 Vanderbilt with a best-ever 26 regular season wins.

You’ll also notice, of course, how the situation changes in a hurry. We haven’t been doing this great-at-baseball thing very long, but it looks more like the college basketball conversation every day. Play for and make the breaks as much as you can in the regular season, and celebrate like crazy when you do…and then, when the tournament comes our way, try to score. But there are no guarantees you will.

The 1994 Vols were bounced in the regional finals by Arizona State. The 1995 Vols made it to the College World Series and won a couple of games before bowing out to the eventual champs from Cal State Fullerton. Tennessee also went back to Omaha in 2001, 2005, and last season despite not winning the SEC.

Those two very best teams of the 30-game era? They were both bounced at home in the super regionals. In 2000, South Carolina was the number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, swept their way to the super regionals, and beat Louisiana Lafayette 6-3 in the first game. But they fell 7-1 and 3-2 in the next two, coming one win shy of Omaha.

In 2013, a Vanderbilt team with Dansby Swanson and Walker Buehler spent the last five weeks of the regular season ranked #1 or #2, and were the #2 overall seed at tournament time. But they fell to Louisville in two straight games in the super regionals, 5-3 and 2-1.

We watched this happen to Arkansas last year: number one overall seed, beat NC State 21-2 in the opener of the super regional…then lost a pair of one-run games, and it’s over.

Of the 11 SEC teams to win at least 22 regular season games in the last 26 years, only six made it to Omaha. Only three of them won it all. There are no guarantees.

We looked last summer at what regular success in baseball might look like. Half the SEC has made it to Omaha in the last four years; it’s a good expectation for every player to come into your program as a freshman to get there at some point in his career. But making it every year just doesn’t happen, even in this conference:

College World Series appearances (since 1999)

  • 8: Florida (last in 2018), LSU (2017)
  • 6: Arkansas (2019), South Carolina (2012)
  • 5: Mississippi State (2021), Vanderbilt (2021)
  • 4: Georgia (2008)
  • 3: Tennessee (2021), Texas A&M (2017)
  • 1: Alabama (1999), Auburn (2019), Ole Miss (2014)
  • 0: Kentucky, Missouri

We’ll get to that in about three weeks. For now, there is plenty of history and an SEC Championship available for this team in the regular season. We should celebrate that like there’s no tomorrow. And when tomorrow does come, this team will have given itself a great opportunity to make even more history.

Go Vols.

Pass Distribution & New Wide Receivers

The addition of Bru McCoy this week raises the ceiling on our hypothetical offseason conversations. And it was already fairly high given what this offense did last season, even with Velus Jones and Javonta Payton now off to the NFL.

There may be more on the way:

Robinson’s familiarity with Heupel is an obvious plus, and he would give Tennessee another option in a room full of intriguing possibilities. In this fast-paced offense, there’s an idea here that there will be plenty of footballs to go around. Off-season additions can feel like they’re a contribution to a conversation about who the fourth or fifth guy will be.

But at least in year one, the rotation ended up being so much tighter, the better off-season question turned out to be, “Who’s number two?”

Last season Cedric Tillman caught 64 passes, Velus Jones 62. Those two combined for 51.9% of Tennessee’s total receptions, and 63.3% of the receptions among the regular rotation (players catching 10+ passes in 2021). Both of those numbers are higher than anything we’ve seen around here recently:

Top Receiving Duos at UT, 2009-21

SeasonTop 2 Pass CatchersPct. of Receptions
2021Tillman & Velus51.9%
2020Palmer & Gray35.2%
2019Jennings & Palmer46.5%
2018Jennings & Callaway38.1%
2017B. Johnson & Kelly41.1%
2016Malone & Jennings37.8%
2015Pearson & Kamara32.7%
2014Howard & Pearson32.7%
2013Howard & North42.9%
2012Hunter & Patterson41.8%
2011Rogers & Rivera43.0%
2010G. Jones & D. Moore42.9%
2009G. Jones & D. Moore36.9%

Also seeing two players at or close to 50% of the team’s total receptions: UCF under Heupel.

  • 2020: Marlon Williams & Jaylon Robinson, 50.6%
  • 2019: Gabriel Davis & Marlon Williams, 45.4%
  • 2018: Gabriel Davis & Dredrick Snelson, 42.9%

Their 2019 number would also be higher than anything seen at UT in the post-Fulmer era after 2021 and 2019. In the latter, the Vols had the future NFL trio of Jauan Jennings, Marquez Callaway, and Josh Palmer. How does it look if we expand it to the top three targets:

Top Receiving Trios at Tennessee, 2009-21

SeasonTop 3 Pass CatchersPct. of Receptions
2021Tillman, Velus, Hyatt60.5%
2020Palmer, Gray, Velus47.5%
2019Jennings, Callaway, Palmer61.5%
2018Jennings, Callaway, Palmer51.5%
2017B. Johson, Kelly, Callaway54.4%
2016Malone, Jennings, Kamara54.6%
2015Pearson, Kamara, Malone46.8%
2014Howard, Pearson, Hurd45.2%
2013Howard, North, R. Neal57.1%
2012Hunter, Patterson, Rivera54.4%
2011Rogers, Rivera, D. Arnett53.8%
2010Jones, Moore, Stocker59.2%
2009Jones, Moore, Stocker49.4%

Here, outside of that NFL trio in 2019, last season again separates itself from the pack.

Is there a correlation between the best offenses and diversity of targets? Tyler Bray’s 2012 attack and Josh Dobbs’ 2016 squad were almost identical in the percentage of catches by their top three targets; Bray’s used a tight end Dobbs’ a back.

At UCF, trios were the name of the game in their dynamite offenses in 2018 and 2019:

  • 2018: G. Davis, D. Snelson, T. Nixon 60.7%
  • 2019: G. Davis, M. Williams, T. Nixon 63.5%

So consistently, we’ve seen this coaching staff find its best two or three wide receivers, and ride them to incredible heights all season long.

After two weeks last season, it looked like Tennessee would throw it to the tight end more than ever. But that gave way to a lethal attack involving Velus, Tillman, plus Javonta Payton 18 times for 413 yards.

Jaylin Hyatt actually ended the season with three more receptions than Payton. He caught four passes against Bowling Green in the opener, then didn’t catch a pass until the South Carolina game. His 17 catches over the last eight games made for a nice quartet of options at receiver for Tennessee’s offense, along with 34 combined receptions for Jacob Warren and Princeton Fant.

One consistent truth last season: after the running back being the #3 receiver throughout the Butch Jones era, Heupel’s offense almost never looked their way in the passing game. With just 20 total receptions for backs last season, the Vol offense fell generally in line with what they saw at UCF. Otis Anderson had 31 catches as a back in 2019; no other back had more than 20 in a season during his time there.

This coaching staff loves receivers, and loves finding the best of their best. I would assume it’ll still be important to figure out who the fourth option is in this passing game. But if form holds, the real question at this point is who will be number two.

Vols in the Pros: Longevity Rankings

If Dustin Colquitt signs in free agency and plays in every game this fall, he’ll pass Jason Witten for the most NFL appearances by a former Vol. A whopping 271 games is the current record here, with Witten passing Peyton Manning’s 266 appearances in his final season. I count eight former Vols at 200+ games played via Wikipedia, with Witten 26th among all players and 12th if you remove specialists.

When I was in middle and high school in the 90s, I used to make a list for my grandparents around this time every off-season. After the draft, I’d start writing down where each former Vol was slated to play that fall. My grandparents had Sunday Ticket, and always chose who to watch based on how many former Vols were playing. And in the 90s, the options were bountiful.

As was the case for many around here, it became a futile exercise once Peyton entered the league: they were watching the Colts. And 266 of Peyton’s games later, there were fewer Vols to choose from. It’s a trend the program is already working to reverse under Josh Heupel.

Greatness does not guarantee longevity. But longevity guarantees you’ll be remembered. I’d assume there are still quite a few walking around Farragut whose favorite Vol of all is Bill Bates. Charlie Garner ranks sixth in collegiate rushing yards among UT running backs in the 90s alone, then had a longer NFL career than all of them. I knew I could find him on Sundays for a long, long time. In the days when the Tennessee Titans were still the Houston Oilers, it’s how many in Big Orange Country found their favorite NFL team.

What’s also changed since then: how many Vols you can watch in the NBA. And the NBA is much more about the postseason.

Greatness does not guarantee longevity, and it does not guarantee team success (though Charlie Garner played in a Super Bowl and Bill Bates has multiple rings).

Case in point: Bernard King is the undisputed best basketball player to come out of Tennessee. Despite injuries and suspensions, King trails only Dale Ellis (1,209) in NBA appearances with 874 games played via RealGM. Allan Houston and Tobias Harris are the only other Vols to appear in 750+ NBA games.

King played those 874 games over 16 years, more than half of them after the NBA expanded the postseason from 12 to 16 teams. He appeared in 28 playoff games.

Grant Williams has played in 209 career games in three seasons. He’ll appear in his 28th playoff game tonight.

Ellis is the leader here too with 73 playoff appearances. But he only made one trip to the conference finals, with Seattle swept by the Lakers in 1987. Allan Houston made 63 playoff appearances, getting to the NBA Finals in 2000 1999 with a signature moment of his own in the first round.

Those two were on an all-star level: Ellis averaged 21 points per game in that 1987 run, Houston 18 in 2000 1999. (That’s a lot considering that game winner made it a 78-77 final score!)

But right now, both Tobias Harris and Grant Williams still have the opportunity to see each other in the conference finals. That would guarantee a Vol in the NBA Finals for the first time since Jordan McRae in 2016, and the first to play significant minutes there since Houston. Tobias averages 19 points in 40 minutes in these playoffs with the Sixers. Grant is getting 11 points in 30 minutes while guarding, you know, Durant and Giannis.

Even if the Bucks sweep the Celtics, Grant will tie Josh Richardson with 30 career playoff appearances. And if Boston finds a way to advance, he could climb as high as sixth all-time in playoff appearances among Vol alumni. In three years.

Tobias is already fifth on that list, and will pass Ernie Grunfeld for fourth in this round. Should the Sixers advance to the Finals, he could pass C.J. Watson to trail only Ellis and Houston all-time. These kind of postseason, championship opportunities are just something we haven’t had available as Tennessee basketball fans.

For an East Tennessee fanbase with solid NBA options – the Grizz, Trae Young in Atlanta – Tennessee’s on-court success the last 15+ years has finally produced legitimate homegrown options for the next generation of fans. I’m biased, of course, as a kid who became a Celtics fan in the 80s because he looked like Larry Bird. It’s a gift to have Grant Williams on my favorite team.

But it’s probably more of a gift than we give it credit for to have former Vols on any team to still be playing right now.

Draft Picks, Recruiting Rankings, Wins, and The Future

We’re in this interesting place where matching our best regular season in 14 years is a baseline conversation for year two. That’s in part because Josh Heupel and his team did such a good job exceeding expectations in year one.

So when we look back on “the wilderness”, it’s with a healthy degree of uncertainty about where exactly we are right now. Tennessee’s record, recruiting rankings, and draft picks from 2021 will look similar to what we’ve seen for the last 10+ years. But even that similarity trends positive. If four Tennessee players are drafted this weekend (with Matthew Butler, Velus Jones, Cade Mays, and Alontae Taylor leading projections), that would match the second-highest total for Vol alumni in the last 11 years:

  • Six picks in 2017 (Barnett, Kamara, Sutton, Reeves-Maybin, Malone, Dobbs)
  • Four picks in 2013 (Patterson, Hunter, Dallas Thomas, Rivera)

And those drafts, of course, came following year three for Derek Dooley and year four for Butch Jones, more time to build on their own terms, etc.

The long view still reflects the wilderness, as Braden Gall’s research showed this week:

In the NFL Draft, the Vols are contemporaries with Missouri, Ole Miss, and Kentucky over the last 12 years. It’s similar to what you find in wins going back through the post-Fulmer era: from 2009-2020, Tennessee went 73-75 under Kiffin, Dooley, Butch, and Pruitt. That .493 winning percentage is likewise 11th in the SEC during that span: just behind Ole Miss (.503) and just ahead of Arkansas (.466) and Kentucky (.463), with Vanderbilt bringing up the rear.

If there’s good news here, it will still feel like bad news in the past tense: though the Vols have won games and sent players to the NFL at only the 11th-best rate in the league over the last dozen years, that’s not how we’ve recruited. Tracking the 247 composite rankings back to 2010 as well, Tennessee is probably right where you expect them to be: still among the top half of the league with the other traditional powers, with a clean break to the bottom half.

Average Overall Recruiting Ranking, 247 Composite 2010-22

TeamAverage
Alabama1.69
Georgia5.62
LSU6.92
Florida10.15
Auburn10.23
Texas A&M12.08
Tennessee14.77
Ole Miss22.85
South Carolina25.62
Mississippi State27.31
Arkansas27.92
Kentucky33.69
Missouri36.38
Vanderbilt47.54

Despite Tennessee’s struggles on the field and in sending its best players to Sunday, the Vols have still recruited as a Top 15 team nationally on average. The lowest-ranked class in this span was 25th in Butch Jones’ first two months on the job in 2013. He also turned in two Top 10 classes the next two years.

So sure, in the past tense, it’s a strike against Tennessee. But for the present and future, it’s a great sign: this program, through four different head coaches and few winning seasons, was still able to pull Top 15 classes on average. The idea that you can win here in line with the other traditional powers in this league? That still holds up quite well.

Which leads one to wonder, of course, what we might do if more wins began to follow.

In that department, the Vols are currently seventh in the 2023 recruiting rankings, have Nico in the boat, and are in on several other blue chip prospects. And the projections for this fall, before any of those kids arrive, trend toward the opportunity to make some recent history.

Do that, and Tennessee will give itself the opportunity to make some capital-H History once more. The potential for this place never left. And the Vols are edging closer to things looking a little less like the wilderness, and a little more like the promised land.

First Impressions of 2022 Expectations

In 2022, how would we feel about 8-4?

In the last 14 years, it’s a number the Vols hit only twice. Tennessee went 8-4 in 2015 and 2016 under Butch Jones. Both of those seasons came with mixed feelings, an 11-game winning streak bookended by disappointing outcomes to open 2015 and close 2016. The Vols made plenty of individual memories in that stretch, but couldn’t sustain enough success to create lasting change.

Six years later, our feelings might still be mixed about an 8-4 outcome. If that’s the case, it’s a testament to what Josh Heupel’s team did in year one.

The 8-4 finishes in 2015 and 2016 came in years three and four under Butch Jones. He went 6-6 in year two. His predecessor went 5-7 after Tyler Bray was injured. And his successor went 7-5 by way of losses to Georgia State and BYU, followed by a six-game winning streak to close the year.

An 8-4 regular season would be the best any of Tennessee’s head coaches have done in year two since Phillip Fulmer. And if you believe in diminishing returns – or at least the idea of it – Josh Heupel’s mountain was steeper than any of them considering what he inherited.

And yet, we talk very little about what he inherited these days because of what he did with it in year one.

In the early returns from our expected win total machine, our community projects the Vols to win 8.1 regular season games. It’ll stay live on our site throughout the summer, then we’ll clear the board when fall camp begins and retake our temperature once we know more about transfer portal outcomes, health, and offseason chatter. Either way, 8.1 is a tantalizing number when you consider it in the form of, “What’s more likely: 7-5 or 9-3?”

Some individual percentage breakdowns we’ll talk more about as we go this summer:

  • It’s close, but our community gives the Vols a slight edge in a pair of games the numbers suggest Tennessee will ultimately split: a 57.5% chance of beating Florida, and a 52.8% chance of winning at LSU.
  • We’re still not quite ready to assume a major upset, but the Vols get puncher’s odds against Alabama (20.4%) and Georgia (18.6%).
  • The numbers suggest Tennessee goes 3-1 in this group of four: at Pittsburgh (65.2%), Kentucky (67.8%), Missouri (73.8%), and at South Carolina (67.8%).

If all of those outcomes held, you’d get 8-4 by way of what we might consider a disappointing loss to a team from that last group, but also a signature win over Florida or LSU. Not all 8-4s are created equal, to be sure.

We think the win total machine does a good job with managing expectations in a healthy way. In that sense, 8-4 might feel like “achievement”: not over, not under, just the head nod and yep, we probably did what we should’ve done.

But here again lies the beauty of hope, bolstered by the reality of the way Tennessee exceeded expectations under Heupel in year one. Tying the best regular season number the Vols have put up in 14 years might feel a little underwhelming at first glance. But just beyond it – well within the realm of the possible – is the kind of season that couldn’t help but elevate your program. A 9-3 finish hasn’t been done here since 2007. If that led to the Outback Bowl, that’s been done once here since then. If that led to the Citrus Bowl, that hasn’t been done here since 2001. If that led to anything beyond, that’s never been done here in the CFP format. And if the Vols won any of those bowl games to finish 10-3, that hasn’t been done here since 2004.

This is the conversation Josh Heupel and this program have built for themselves going into year two, from the ashes of everything they inherited going into year one. Doing it as well as it’s been done around here in the last 14 years is the starting point. And going beyond – and continuing to create real change for this program – is within reach.

Go Vols.

2022 Expected Win Total Machine

Spring practice is over, opening night is two days closer, and it’s a good time to break out the expected win total machine. Tennessee’s number one ranking in baseball will help these next 136 days from here to Ball State pass more quickly. But after spring practice is still a good time to take the temperature, a little more free from August’s optimism.

If you’re new to our site and/or the win total machine, enter the percentage chance you give Tennessee to win each game this fall. Your number against Ball State should be closer to 100; your number at Georgia should be closer to zero, though I’m curious to see how much distance we’re feeling from there this off-season. Enter all of your percentage guesses, and the win total machine will tell you how many regular season wins you expect from Tennessee this fall.

It’s one thing to say, “We’re going 9-3!” and believe these nine games are 100% wins and those three are 100% losses, which is never how it actually works. That’s why we love the honesty the win total machine brings out, providing an expectation that should be both healthier and closer to reality.

When you submit your totals, you’ll be part of our community expected win total. You can also leave your individual win totals in the comments below for conversation. We’ll check back in with some preliminary analysis as we go.

(If you have trouble with the table on your phone, try viewing the page in desktop mode)

Good luck and Go Vols.

Tennessee’s Rise in College Baseball Polls from Preseason to #1

Midweek loss aside, Tennessee should have every opportunity to remain at number one for a fourth straight week if they take care of business against Alabama this weekend. The Vols are 31-2, unanimously atop the polls. Depending on who you ask, Miami (26-6) or Oregon State (24-7) is behind them at number two. It’s a scenario we’re not overly accustomed to in college polls: the number one team seems so far ahead of the pack, how many losses would it take to unseat them?

There is much about this baseball run we’re not overly accustomed to, including the stay atop the polls. Three weeks at number one puts the baseball program here in range of men’s basketball, with five total weeks at number one in its history (one from 2008, four from 2019). Shout out to College Poll Archive for the data, which tells us the football team has spent 18 total weeks at number one, most recently in the last six weeks of the 1998 season. Lady Vol softball also spent time at number one in 2007 and 2014.

There’s still, uh, a ways to go to catch Lady Vol basketball, with 112 total weeks at number one.

For baseball, it’s not just the length of stay at number one. It’s the gap this team closed, with the quickness, in arriving there.

In college baseball’s myriad preseason polls, the Vols were ranked anywhere from 16th to 21st. If you start at the bottom, with Perfect Game’s #21 preseason ranking, the Vols have made a jump of +20 in the polls. That’s never been done here in men’s basketball*, and has only happened twice in the Top 25 era in football. Good news on both fronts there: in 1985 and 1989, Tennessee was unranked at the start of the season. Both years ended with an SEC Championship and a Top 5 finish.

*(One update: the 2006 basketball team started the season unranked, then jumped as high as eighth, a theoretical gain of at least +18. I should’ve included them here – Bruce Pearl’s first group is an obvious contender for massively exceeding preseason expectations.)

If you just take the +15 jump from a preseason ranking of 16th in the USA Today and NCBWA polls, we’re still in incredibly rare airspace. In men’s basketball, a +15 jump in the polls has happened only once: 2011, when the Vols opened the year at 23rd before starting 7-0, taking down Villanova to win the preseason NIT and Pittsburgh on the road. The Vols were seventh in the AP poll on December 13, a +16 jump. It went south from there in Bruce Pearl’s final season.

A couple of honorable mentions here:

  • The 2000 Vols started 19th but went as high as 5th, a +14 jump. They finished 11th, with an SEC Championship and the program’s first Sweet 16 in the 64-team format.
  • The team we just said goodbye to started 18th, but was 5th in the final poll headed into the NCAA Tournament, fresh off an SEC Tournament title, for a +13 jump.

In football, the Vols have only made four +15 jumps in the Top 25 era:

  • 1985: Started unranked, finished fourth with an SEC Championship
  • 1989: Started unranked, finished fifth with an SEC Championship
  • 1992: Started 21st, and were ranked 4th on October 6 after a 5-0 start with wins over #14 Georgia and #4 Florida. That +17 jump was followed by three straight losses by a total of nine points, a wild year that led to the transition from Johnny Majors to Phillip Fulmer.
  • 2006: Started 23rd, but jumped to 11th in one week after dismantling #9 Cal in the season opener. The Vols went to 7th on October 15 after beating Georgia 51-33 in Athens for a +16 jump from preseason. Tennessee was still 8th and 7-1 overall facing #13 LSU on the first Saturday in November. Injuries disrupted the finish from there.

So in both weeks at number one and the rise from preseason expectations, this baseball team is working in uncharted territory. And there may be more where that came from this season.

Grading Year One Coaches with SP+

There were 18 coaching changes on the FBS level heading into the 2021 season; that number jumped to 29 on the carousel’s latest round this winter.

Timing – not often Tennessee’s friend these last 15 years – is definitely on our side in this regard. Last year, the Vols rode the carousel with Texas and Auburn among major powers, plus South Carolina as our contemporary. The only other power five openings were Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, and Vanderbilt. Boise State came open when Bryan Harsin went to Auburn, UCF when Josh Heupel came here. That’s about it.

The 2022 year one cycle includes Florida, LSU, Miami, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Oregon, TCU, USC, Virginia Tech, and Washington. That’s ten schools who were in the hunt for a national championship at some point during the BCS/CFP era. Then add in Duke, Texas Tech, Virginia, and Washington State in the power five pool.

You need timing to work in your favor to help get these things right. And then, you know, you need to get it right.

It’s impossible to know anything for sure after one year. We’ve seen that play out at Tennessee before. We regularly use Bill Connelly’s SP+ ratings on our site, both because they value every snap, and because they’re helpful in separating two teams with similar records.

Here’s a look at Tennessee’s four previous year one seasons in SP+:

CoachYearPrev. RecordPrev. SP+Year OneYear One SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Jeremy Pruitt20184-81.25-75.514.3
Butch Jones20135-715.15-75.10-10
Derek Dooley20107-616.26-77.7-1-8.5
Lane Kiffin20095-7127-616.224.2

This has gone one of two ways the last four times we’ve tried it. Lane Kiffin and Jeremy Pruitt were able to take a step forward in year one, for two very different reasons. Kiffin’s team was solid, which you’d expect just two years removed from Atlanta, and more competitive than their 2008 predecessors. Pruitt’s first team had the luxury of following the program’s low point; even though they lost six games by 25+ points, it was still an improvement over 2017.

Year one for Derek Dooley and Butch Jones took a step backwards in overall competitiveness. Both of those seasons followed two of the better teams we’ve seen around here in the last 15 years. Kiffin’s one-year stint automatically put Dooley’s first team behind the eight ball, and the 2010 Vols finished 8.5 points worse in SP+. Dooley’s final team was competitive with almost everyone, but couldn’t beat any of the ranked foes they faced. Meanwhile, Butch Jones’ first team the next year beat #11 South Carolina, but suffered a handful of blowout losses, ultimately finishing 10 points worse in SP+.

Again, no guarantees after one year: Butch Jones turned in a -10 in 2013, but led easily the best Tennessee team from 2008-2021 two years later by any metric. Some situations just naturally lead to more difficult year ones (or year zeroes, as Derek Dooley would say). And that’s what we thought Josh Heupel was walking into: NCAA investigation, rough finish the year before, late to the carousel, massive transfer portal exodus.

How did Heupel actually do?

Let’s compare him to the rest of the freshman coaching class of 2021.

Uh oh, we changed coaches in the summer

CoachTeam2020 Record2020 SP+2021 Record2021 SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Tim AlbinOhio2-1-2.33-9-11.61-9.3
Maurice LinguistBuffalo6-15.34-8-9.5-2-14.8

I don’t recommend it. Both of these guys followed local legends too: Frank Solich had been at Ohio since 2005. Lance Leipold won two division titles and finished the 2020 season in the Top 25 at Buffalo. As a result, both of these programs were significantly worse in 2021. No surprise here.

A missed first step

CoachTeam2020 Record2020 SP+2021 Record2021 SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Will HallSouthern Miss3-7-9.13-9-14.20-5.1
Gus MalzahnUCF6-410.99-44.83-6.1
Steve SarkisianTexas7-316.45-78.5-2-7.9
Butch JonesArkansas State4-7-9.12-10-17.9-2-8.8

Again, some struggles make more sense than others. Jay Hopson resigned after one game of the 2020 season at Southern Miss, an unusual situation Will Hall inherited this fall.

The other three in this group all brought previous power five experience at championship contenders, with Sarkisian being the hottest commodity in the cycle. And yet, play-for-play, all three teams went backwards in year one. The last time UCF lost 4+ games in the regular season was 2016. Tom Herman’s worst season at Texas was 7-6 in his first year in 2017; Charlie Strong’s two 5-7 campaigns in Austin were far more competitive than what Sarkisian turned in. And Butch Jones got off to a similar start in his first year at Arkansas State in SP+ as he did at Tennessee, though the won-loss record is certainly worse.

Again, no guarantees here – Texas did finish fifth nationally in recruiting – but these were all backward first steps.

About the same

CoachTeam2020 Record2020 SP+2021 Record2021 SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Terry BowdenUL Monroe0-10-22.14-7-20.341.8
Bryan HarsinAuburn6-511.46-7110-0.4
Clark LeaVanderbilt0-9-18.12-10-19.42-1.3
Lance LeipoldKansas0-9-18.42-10-19.72-1.3
Jedd FischArizona0-5-9.11-11-12.61-3.5

Terry Bowden is the biggest winner of this group, which includes a lot of, “Wait and see.” Vanderbilt, Kansas, and Arizona were all winless in 2020, and combined to win five games in 2021. The situation at Auburn probably deserves its own category; in SP+ and in total wins they Bryan Harsin’s first year was almost identical to Gus Malzahn’s. Stay tuned.

A good first step

CoachTeam2020 Record2020 SP+2021 Record2021 SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Charles HuffMarshall7-337-6805
Andy AvalosBoise State5-25.47-59.424

Marshall is an interesting case study, 7-3 in Doc Holliday’s final season, 7-6 in Charles Huff’s first. But the Thundering Herd lost four one-possession games last year, and were dominant in several of their seven victories. Boise State fans probably aren’t satisfied at 7-5, but three of those were one-possession losses and the Broncos also beat BYU and Fresno State on the road. If form holds here, these programs are off to better starts than their win/loss total might suggest.

A really good first step

CoachTeam2020 Record2020 SP+2021 Record2021 SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Kane WommackSouth Alabama4-7-16.15-7-7.218.9
Bret BielemaIllinois2-6-4.15-74.338.4
Shane BeamerSouth Carolina2-8-2.97-63.956.8

Kane Wommack’s first-year squad almost got both Billy Napier (20-18) and Jamey Chadwell (27-21 OT). They also lost a four overtime game at Texas State and by a touchdown at Troy. Bielema recovered nicely from a 1-4 start to beat Penn State and Minnesota on the road.

And credit Shane Beamer, whose Gamecocks lost to the Vols and Texas A&M by 25 and 30, and almost lost to Vanderbilt in a three-week span in October. Since then, they beat Florida and Auburn, and ran away from North Carolina in the Mayo Bowl. It was a really good year one, good enough to earn him a share of the Steve Spurrier award for best year-one coach with…

A transformational first step

CoachTeam2020 Record2020 SP+2021 Record2021 SP+Wins ChangeSP+ Change
Blake AndersonUtah State1-5-16.311-30.11016.4
Josh HeupelTennessee3-74.67-617.5412.9

First, shout out to Blake Anderson. A +10 in wins is twice as good as anyone else on this list, and would be most years. Along the way they smoked San Diego State for the Mountain West title. No complaints about his name at the top of this list.

But Josh Heupel is clearly above everyone else.

He followed one of the toughest and least competitive years at Tennessee with one of the most competitive teams we’ve had here in 14 years. In SP+, the 2022 Vols are the second-best team in Knoxville since 2008, bested only by the 2015 team. The Vols went 1-3 in one-possession games, with two of those losses to New Year’s Six teams from Pittsburgh and Ole Miss.

One forward-looking piece of good news here: when we get overly cautious about the Vols being #9 in 2022 SP+ projections? Tennessee’s rating there is 18.7: just 1.2 points better than last season. The model doesn’t project the Vols to be drastically better than they were last season, because it already believes the Vols were really good.

Again, no guarantees after one year. But not only did Josh Heupel do it better in 2021 than any year one we’ve seen around here, and every other first-year coach last season but one? His team also was better play-for-play than every Tennessee squad save one in the last 14 years. For first impressions, you can’t ask for much more. And it’s created a hope based in performance as much as possibility.