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Well, a weird year gets weirder: the College Football Playoff field was announced yesterday, which means bowls start (checks calendar)…today. So jump in our free bowl pick ’em with confidence points at Fun Office Pools.
Today’s first game is at 2:30 PM ET, but as always we’ve made the earliest kick worth the fewest confidence points. So if you’re coming to this late, you’ll only be one point behind.
Good luck!
So, it’s three games. Two against what we believed to be bubble teams, though Colorado has leapt to 33rd in KenPom on the strength of two absolute blowouts since then. An absolute blowout is now the expectation tonight when the Vols host Tennessee Tech, so we may not learn a whole lot more just yet. League play is 12 days away, and the opener at #16 Missouri may indeed feature the two best teams in the SEC. More answers are coming.
But let’s take a moment to begin to appreciate what may already be true: this might be the best Tennessee defense since…ever.
We’ll use KenPom data, as usual, and call it the modern era. In just three games, the Vols have already jumped up a tier in that history, now just decimal points (22.04 points better than the average team in 100 possessions) behind 2008 (22.17) and 2018 (22.27). Cuonzo’s 2014 team is next at 23.69, with the 2019 Vols still a bit away on the mountaintop (26.24), meaning they’d currently be a little more than a possession favorite on this team. Still, through three games, this Tennessee team statistically belongs in the conversation of, “Who’s the second-best Tennessee team ever?” That’s high praise.
But defensively, these Vols are the conversation.
Tennessee is third nationally in KenPom’s defensive efficiency ratings, trailing Texas Tech and Clemson. That number – 86.2 points allowed against the average team in 100 possessions – is the best in Knoxville, ever.
These Vols are seventh nationally in effective field goal percentage defense, and sixth nationally in creating turnovers. Keon Johnson and Josiah James are Top 50 players in steal percentage. And they’ve done all of this, so far, without fouling much: 29th nationally in free throw rate allowed. In three games, UT opponents have shot only 34 free throws, and are hitting just 25.4% from the arc, 33.6% from the floor.
So yeah, very good, and very good nationally. But this early, I think the most understandable context is what other great Tennessee defensive teams have done. So here’s the list of Vol defensive efficiency via KenPom, which goes back to 1997:
1. 2021 – 86.2 points allowed vs the average team in 100 possessions
Stay tuned.
2. 1999 – 88.0
Jerry Green’s second team thrived on shot-blocking and was so tough inside with C.J. Black, Isiah Victor, and Charles Hathaway. Freshman Vincent Yarbrough also created his fair share of havoc, while Brandon Wharton and Tony Harris were strong on the perimeter. This group stumbled out of the gate after a #9 preseason ranking and had some bad losses against good SEC teams on the road, but closed with six straight wins including a 91-56 blowout of #23 Florida and the SEC East clincher in the regular season finale against #13 Kentucky, one of my favorite Tennessee games ever. They ended the regular season 20-7…then lost to Mississippi State in their first SEC Tournament game. As a four seed, they beat Delaware in round one…then got smoked by Missouri State in round two. But their ceiling was quite high, as you’ll see more in a moment.
3. 2010 – 90.4
The Elite Eight squad was solid all around defensively, especially when operating at full strength. But they excelled at taking away the three ball, with J.P. Prince, Scotty Hopson, and Cameron Tatum all long enough to do so. Basketball was different even just 10 years ago, and while this team could find itself in foul trouble, their ability to make you beat them inside the arc and clean it up with Wayne Chism and Brian Williams from there almost carried them to the Final Four. In that NCAA Tournament run they held Kawhi Leonard to 12 points and San Diego State to 59, ran past 14-seed Ohio (68 points), survived a villainous 31 from Evan Turner in the Sweet 16 but kept Ohio State to 73, and lost 70-69 to Michigan State (Draymond Green with a dozen off the bench). In terms of defense, this group probably got the most out of its entire lineup than any of these teams…with the possible exception of, you know, this year.
4. 2000 – 90.9
Jerry Green, Year Three: the Vols maintained an elite shot-blocking presence and added freshman Ron Slay to their arsenal, with an incredibly deep squad capable of disrupting just about any lineup you threw their way. In the annals of Tennessee basketball heartbreak, few top this group: ranked in the Top 5 in mid-February, 24-5 at the end of the regular season and SEC Champions. They too stumbled in their first SEC Tournament game, but earned a four seed and beat the defending champs from UConn in round two. The top three seeds in the region all lost in round two, meaning the Vols were the highest ranked seed left going to the Sweet 16, where they led 8-seed North Carolina late…before faltering down the stretch. These Vols were 17th in offensive efficiency, 27th in defensive efficiency.
5. 2018 – 92.4
The most recent torchbearers, Rick Barnes’ first Vol tournament squad finished sixth nationally in defensive efficiency in 2018. While the 2019 squad gave up too many threes, which ultimately cost them in the end, the 2018 squad was elite on the arc in surrendering just 31.8% from three. James Daniel’s presence is the only personnel difference there, otherwise they were the same talented bunch that spent a month at number one the following season. Without Kyle Alexander, we saw their efficiency drop in costly fashion against Loyola Chicago.
Some of the other candidates we’d think of are just behind on this list: Kevin O’Neill’s last team is seventh, the 2008 squad is eighth, Cuonzo’s last team is ninth. They were all excellent in particular areas: O’Neill’s team inside the arc, the ’08 Vols at forcing turnovers, Cuonzo’s team at eliminating offensive rebounds.
Again, it’s early. But this Tennessee team is in the Top 10 nationally in two of the four factors, and in the Top 30 in another. They’re in the Top 30 in defending from two and from three.
It’s early. But the bar defensively isn’t just high…right now, they are the bar.
Let’s say Jeremy Pruitt gets abducted by aliens tomorrow, taken to a planet that hates asparagus but loves cornbread so he can rule on high. Tennessee, forced to make a change, hires Coach McCoach. We’ve all learned to be a little unsure, but Coach McCoach turns in the following seasons in Knoxville:
After going 78-81 (.491) the last 13 years, would you take McCoach’s record of 59-33 (.641) with two division titles over the next seven seasons? Would you believe he’s the guy to lead Tennessee forward?
Because, as you might’ve noticed, those are more or less the seven seasons that got Phillip Fulmer fired from 2002-08.
(I’ve added one additional win to Fulmer’s totals in 2004 and 2005, when college football went back to playing just 11 games before fully adopting the 12-game schedule in 2006. Adding an FCS win in 2005 would’ve made the Vols bowl eligible, and I’ve given them a loss in the bowl game in keeping with the spirit of that season.)
Or maybe you’d take Gus Malzahn’s tenure at Auburn (which is now technically available): 68-35 (.660) over eight years, with two division titles plus playing for a national championship.
The problem, of course, is the rhythm of it all. Malzahn’s .660 came via a 12-2 start in that near-miss championship season of 2013, meaning his next seven seasons have gone:
This is a version of the same thing that got Fulmer, played out over twice as many years: 91-20 (.820) in Phillip’s first nine years, then a little closer to earth in his final seven.
If you track it back to Johnny Majors’ back-to-back SEC titles a few years before Fulmer took over, the Vols have now been in the wilderness (or now exile, perhaps) just as long as we were in the promised land. Over 13 years (1989-2001), Tennessee had the best winning percentage of any SEC school (.813), with four conference titles, a national championship, and just missing a chance to play for another at the end of that cycle. And in the last 13 years, Tennessee’s .491 winning percentage ranks 11th in the SEC, better only than Arkansas, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt.
But it’s the space between – Coach McCoach’s record that got Fulmer fired – that perhaps best reflects who Tennessee historically is.
All-time, the Vols are a program that wins two-thirds of its games. Tennessee remains tenth nationally in winning percentage, dropping only one spot in these last 13 years. In today’s game (non-pandemic edition), that means you win your FCS game and go 8-4 in the others. That means 9-4 is your average year.
Believing 9-4 is your average means understanding that some years, you’re going to go 7-6. But some years, you should also go 11-2.
This, among other things, is what got Butch Jones: 9-4 in 2015 and 2016 represented his ceiling – painfully so knowing the Vols missed so many opportunities – and not his standard. When given another opportunity to see if he could continue building brick by brick, the whole thing fell down in 2017.
Those of us who remember the Decade of Dominance should all be old enough to know better by now. A healthy, fruitful goal for Tennessee isn’t to deem anything that isn’t the 90’s failure. It’s to get Tennessee to produce at the level of expectation it created for itself over 124 seasons, and see if you can take it forward from there.
And this is the question for Tennessee’s future, whether this year or next year or in any year: do you believe your head coach can move the program forward, in keeping with who your program is?
Along those lines, a thought on Tennessee’s leadership as it relates to the past, present, and future:
When Tennessee fans effectively raised their voices and prevented Greg Schiano from becoming head coach three years ago, it was obvious such a move would come with consequences. My name is on one of those pieces from that Sunday too, and with it the understanding that such a thing would not do Tennessee any favors in the short term. And I would not change those choices, nor would the vast majority of the Tennessee fans I know.
Those choices impacted the choices Phillip Fulmer had, in a second search that reportedly focused on Jeremy Pruitt, Mel Tucker, and Kevin Steele. Tucker stayed at Georgia another year, went 5-7 at Colorado, and is now 2-4 at Michigan State. Steele might actually get the Auburn job, so perhaps he’s the biggest winner of the day.
Pruitt was a hire we appreciated at the time for the way it kept an eye on the ceiling: the Vols could’ve hired safe (so we thought at the time) in Les Miles or sentimental in Tee Martin, but took a chance on someone they believed could get Tennessee to its potential. If it turns out, whether this year or next, that Pruitt isn’t that guy, there should be some acknowledgment, spoken or unspoken, that Tennessee’s 2017 search was handcuffed from the beginning, and some of that is on us. And we wouldn’t change it. But it was certainly a factor.
Fans didn’t give Pruitt a contract extension this off-season, reported just before the first game but supposedly in the works pre-pandemic. But if it turns out Pruitt isn’t the guy…I get it. The odds were always going to be against whoever Tennessee hired at the end of that madness in 2017. We shouldn’t hold that choice only over Fulmer. There shouldn’t be a stubborn need to be right about a decision that always had a higher chance of not working out.
But we should want to ensure we’re asking the right questions about the next choice.
You may not like any argument to keep Jeremy Pruitt for 2021. But you should respect some of them. Just because Auburn did a crazy thing doesn’t mean it isn’t crazy. Maybe we all get an asterisk this year; God knows we could all use some grace.
But grace, of course, isn’t meant for only forgiveness and forgetting. It’s meant to help us move forward. What does moving forward look like for Tennessee and Jeremy Pruitt in 2021?
The Vols are currently sitting on a class with a 47.6% blue chip ratio; recruiting continues to be the lead dog in the pro-Pruitt argument, even in turbulent times this season. If Tennessee looks at its talent and looks at the virus, and decides it’s worth finding out what happens to run it back next year, what will we need to see to believe Pruitt can move the program forward?
In this regard, our situation is most similar to 2011-12. After some initial promise, Derek Dooley’s Vols found themselves on the business end of bad losses: 31 points to #1 LSU, 31 points to #2 Alabama, 42 points to #8 Arkansas. Quarterback was also the biggest issue, that time due to injury (cue Dooley’s, “He’s got a broken thumb!”). We spent a lot of time arguing about the argument itself: is it reasonable to judge Dooley based on what he can do without Tyler Bray and Justin Hunter against Top 10 teams in year two? Shouldn’t we be focusing on the more problematic issues in the program he inherited?
Then Tennessee lost to Kentucky, and all hell broke loose.
In tracing where it all went wrong in these last 13 years, there are really only a few Saturdays that could have significantly changed Tennessee’s course. I can’t point to any that would’ve kept Lane Kiffin from leaving for USC. The snowball got so big in 2008, I think you’d need more than one of them to go differently for Fulmer to have kept his job then. And Jeremy Pruitt, though he has a pair of ranked wins in year one and an eight-game winning streak more recently, doesn’t have one close game that could’ve swung things by itself.
But three times in the last 13 (plus one) years, Tennessee’s story ultimately shifted on a single Saturday:
In Atlanta in 2007 and falling just short of there in 2015, it certainly felt like a missed opportunity, but we believed there would be more to come. But when Dooley lost to Kentucky, even before Wilcox left, we knew there would only be one more chance.
If he stays, I don’t know if Jeremy Pruitt will face or create turnover among his coordinators. I do know he’ll need to win.
There’s actually some comforting news from Tennessee’s history here: in 2012, Dooley’s Vols were clearly better, jumping from 6.9 to 15.1 in SP+. They had a chance to win almost every Saturday, a benchmark we thought would be useful for the 2020 Vols. Tennessee took a 20-13 lead on #18 Florida midway through the third quarter, then snuffed out a fake punt. But the Gators scored 24 points in the final 18 minutes, a sign of things to come.
The Vols lost to #5 Georgia by seven, to #19 Mississippi State by 10, and to #1 Alabama by 31 again. By the time they lost to #17 South Carolina by three, almost all of us were out; the Vols added a four overtime loss to Missouri two weeks later to seal it.
In 2012, the Vols were much closer. But, for Dave Hart and the powers that be, it wasn’t close enough: Dooley was fired. Just being better wasn’t good enough, nor should it have been. And I believe that same standard would be applicable in 2021.
It could play out in similar fashion. Our power five opponent is a little lower on the totem pole – NC State then, Pittsburgh next year – and the Vols catch a school from Mississippi in the SEC West rotation. It’s a good opportunity for Tennessee to get to its standard; one thing about finishing 9-4 is, if you get there via a 9-3 regular season, it’d be the first one here since 2007. And if Pruitt does that, he’ll earn the opportunity to see if it is indeed closer to his standard or his ceiling going forward.
If Pruitt stays at Tennessee and Freeze stays at Liberty, the best comparison here isn’t Jon Gruden. It’s Bruce Pearl.
Six years ago, Cuonzo Martin brought back a significant amount of talent after a pair of frustrating finishes. And every time the Vols lost, a significant percentage of our fanbase turned their eyes to Pearl.
He loved Tennessee. He wanted to be here. His resume was obviously superior. He could take us farther than anyone else.
And he had run afoul of the NCAA.
That basketball season reached a point where some were out on Cuonzo even when Cuonzo still had a realistic opportunity to move the program forward. And he almost did, coming within a bad call of the Elite Eight. But it’s not just the missed opportunity to enjoy something good happening to Tennessee, a sad route only for those who choose it. It’s the, “Only he can fix it,” belief, which is seductive and dangerous for all of us.
I don’t know Hugh Freeze or any of the names in this post personally. I’ve always been and remain a Tennessee fan observing from the outside. If his personal life is in a better place than it was when he left Ole Miss, that’s great news.
What about the issues that led to the NCAA vacating 27 of his wins? Is that going to be different in Knoxville?
Here’s the thing about, “Only he can fix it”: we already know that’s not true.
After Pearl and Cuonzo and a brief detour through Donnie Tyndall, Rick Barnes came to Tennessee.
Bruce Pearl is still a great coach. He got Auburn to the Final Four. Auburn is also currently ineligible for the NCAA Tournament.
Rick Barnes is still chasing Tennessee’s first Final Four. But in recruiting, in weeks at number one, and against Kentucky, Barnes hasn’t just reached Pearl’s ceiling in Knoxville. He raised it.
Hugh Freeze is still a great coach. Maybe he could come to Tennessee, run a clean program, and achieve continued greatness here. But it would be a bad idea to believe he’s the only one who could.
In fact, sometimes the timing actually does work in your favor – again, see Barnes – and in this case, some other names with natural ties to Tennessee might still be available for the Vols next year, if Pruitt doesn’t work out. Billy Napier, a Cookeville native, is 7-7, 10-3, and currently 9-1 at Louisiana. He’ll play Jamey Chadwell, a Campbell County native, on Saturday for the Sun Belt title. Napier, with both mid-major success and power five assistant experience, has a more proven resume right now than Derek Dooley or Jeremy Pruitt on the day they were hired, and I’d argue with you about it being better than Lane Kiffin and Butch Jones too.
There are never guarantees:
For every coach who turned mid-to-low-major success into major success – Matt Campbell, James Franklin, Dan Mullen – there are coaches who aced level one but struggled with level two: Scott Frost, Justin Fuente, Charlie Strong. You never know. Maybe you stay the course and a year from now, we’ve got much more data on Chadwell. Maybe Napier is still available and still a good idea. Maybe we’ll want to try Auburn’s past in Malzahn, or maybe they’ll make Kevin Steele sound like such a good idea Fulmer will go that route.
Maybe it actually will be Freeze, whether his biggest questions are answered or not.
And, after this crazy year, maybe the answer could still be Jeremy Pruitt.
Once more, #opportunityisnowhere, and you can Rorschach that thing to death. I think that’s always the most important work: how do we understand success at Tennessee right now? And who/what do we believe is the best path forward?
Go Vols.
Opening the season with what we believe to be back-to-back bubble teams gives you a chance to learn about the #12 Vols at an accelerated rate. But this one in particular will help answer one of the biggest questions Tennessee faced coming into the year.
Last year the Vols went to Cincinnati coming off the loss to Memphis; Lamonte Turner was struggling but still playing. Tennessee shot 45% from the floor and 17-of-17 at the free throw line…and lost by 12. That’s because the Bearcats shot 56.4% from the floor and a blistering 26-of-40 for 65% inside the arc. The last team to shoot better than that against the Vols from two was Wisconsin in Maui in November of 2016. And Cincinnati was +11 on the glass.
Tre Scott, with his 15 points in 38 minutes, is gone, as are the Cumberland brothers in the backcourt. Guard Keith Williams is back, and the Bearcats run a lot of their stuff through him. But the biggest challenge for Tennessee against this team returns: 7’1″ Chris Vogt, now joined by 6’10” Rapolas Ivanauskas, often on the floor at the same time.
Cincinnati is 2-1 with a loss to Xavier and wins over Lipscomb and Furman (#65 KenPom). And once again, they’re getting it done inside the arc (58.5%, 25th nationally) and keeping everyone off the offensive glass (13th nationally).
What will Tennessee do against this kind of size? And can the Vols rebound well enough to win?
The answer to the latter will look long and hard toward E.J. Anosike. The Vols didn’t rebound as well as Rick Barnes would’ve liked against Colorado (-6), but Anosike grabbed four offensive rebounds in 14 minutes. That Jarnell Stokes/Jeronne Maymon role we wanted to see if he could play looked good in the opener. Tennessee still got 10 rebounds from Yves Pons and the usual better-than-you-think rebounding from Josiah James with six boards. They will need all of that and more against this team, especially if shots aren’t falling again.
Defensively, Tennessee has made so much hay as a shot blocking team under Rick Barnes: fifth nationally in block percentage last year, 10th in 2019, and always in the Top 65 nationally even in the first two years when the Vols struggled. Last year the Vols blocked 7% of Cincinnati’s shots, half their normal average. When facing this kind of height at multiple positions, it’s hard for Pons to be everywhere and hard for anyone to be disruptive. The Vols created a different kind of havoc against Colorado, forcing a turnover on 35.7% of their possessions. It’s one game, but that’s currently second in the nation. The more you force turnovers, the fewer shots you need to block.
The Vols won’t see this kind of size often, but they will again if Kentucky continues to put 6’10” Isaiah Jackson and 7’0″ Olivier Sarr on the floor together. But Tennessee’s potential to be a better rebounding team will get a stiff test early. And as was the case with Colorado, non-conference performance will matter much more with smaller sample sizes due to the virus. The Vols are still trying to add one more game, but after this one our non-conference schedule features three teams hovering in the 200+ range in KenPom, then Kansas in January.
We’re still playing college football on Saturdays (which will become clear when you see the TV schedule), but check out the opportunities for the league in basketball tomorrow:
That’s a big spot for Cuozno’s team to help us all out.
The Vols can help themselves, and help us feel better about one of their few perceived weaknesses, by how they handle Cincinnati’s size tomorrow. Does Anosike get more minutes? Do the Vols again create so many turnovers it just doesn’t matter? Will the mid-range jumper be our friend this time?
See you at 12:30 tomorrow to find out.
Go Vols.
Almost nine months ago, the SEC Tournament was cancelled just before Tennessee and Alabama would’ve met in the quarterfinals. The Vols beat Missouri in football 66 days ago, which feels more or less the same as nine months ago.
The deep frustration with football can make it easy to forget to be grateful we got any sports at all this year. Basketball, in its sixth attempt for a season opener, reminded us of some of that today. And then for the first eight-and-a-half minutes, we got exactly what we wanted: the Vols jumped a good Colorado team 19-4, and not on the strength of their freshmen but their veterans.
The Buffaloes went to zone, and it worked, bogging everything down. But the Vols never relinquished the lead, and smothered Colorado throughout: the Buffaloes shot 33.3% from the field with 23 turnovers. Tennessee wasn’t much better, but they didn’t have to be in securing a 56-47 win in the season opener.
The first impressions:
Instead of the threes-and-frees game the NBA has become, Tennessee continues to generate a bunch of good looks in the mid-range. It’s not just something the Vols went to with Grant Williams to let him create: Tennessee got good looks from two from John Fulkerson, Yves Pons, and even E.J. Anosike. They did not go down easy: Pons was 1-of-9, Anosike 1-of-6, and Fulkerson came on late to finish 4-of-10. But they were there, seemingly by design again.
Meanwhile, the “who takes the threes,” question: Victor Bailey early, finishing 2-of-6. Jaden Springer late, with a pair of big shots in the second half. And Santiago Vescovi throughout, who hit 3-of-4. The Vols took 19 threes on the night, still finding their best looks inside the arc against the zone. Smallest sample size, of course, but we’ll see how many possessions go through the mid-range going forward.
The vets started: Vescovi, JJJ, Pons, Fulkerson, and Victor Bailey. I was curious if they’d finish, and it looked like Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer would both give them a run for their money midway through the second half. Johnson had a couple of freshmen turnovers early and couldn’t get going, but made a pair of sensational defensive plays back-to-back, showing the excellent and unusual combination of tenacity and intelligence for a freshman. He added an alley-oop and a baseline jumper in the second half. But then he turned it over twice more, and exited the game at the under four. Jaden Springer turned it over immediately following, and the Vols went back to their starting five veteran lineup.
It worked: Colorado cut it to five with three to play, but the Vols responded with Fulkerson from the midrange. The defense drew a charge, then Josiah James created a turnover the next time down, and it was free throws from there.
When you only score 56, 10 combined points from your five-stars falls into context. I doubt Yves Pons is going to finish with two on 1-of-9 shooting very often, though he was a monster on the glass with 10 rebounds. But those guys will certainly get their chances…they’ll just have to earn them down the stretch by playing cleaner basketball along the way.
“Can they win if Fulkerson is in foul trouble,” is now 1-0. He picked up his third around 90 seconds into the second half, and though the Vols didn’t excel without him, they didn’t falter. Tennessee played a glorified nine-man rotation, with Uros Plavsic making a brief appearance in the first half. Otherwise it was what we thought: the veteran starters, two five stars, and Anosike, plus six minutes from Olivier Nkamhoua. Barnes was high on him early last season when Fulkerson was still establishing himself, and he got the game one vote of confidence as a bench piece.
Otherwise the Vols hit the numbers they wanted without going much over: the starting vets all played 30-35 minutes minus Fulkerson (23), Anosike played 14, Keon Johnson played 13, and Jaden Springer 9. Again, those last two numbers will increase as their turnover decrease, methinks.
It’s one game, but the Vols leapt into the Top 10 in KenPom defense at #7. Up next it’s Cincinnati on Saturday (12:30 PM before the Vols and Vandy at 4:00), in what could be another slugfest if it at all resembles last year’s game. There is a lot to improve on from tonight, but if defense is your most reliable tool in pandemic times, the Vols looked the part tonight.
1-0.
We would’ve taken the basketball Vols any way we could get them at this point: football struggling, five games cancelled, a shot at #1 Gonzaga lost. The fifth of those covid cancellations was UT-Martin, our in-state brethren a late replacement…and 334th in KenPom. Get well soon to the Skyhawks…but now, in their place, a much more interesting option has appeared.
Tad Boyle’s Buffaloes live and die on the bubble: four NCAA Tournament appearances, two NIT’s and a CBI in his first eight years in Boulder. Those four trips to the big dance all landed between 8-11 on the seed list; they were 21-11 (10-8) and projected to be somewhere in there again when things got shut down in March.
Nevermind the usual preseason games that don’t exist this season: Colorado will give the Vols a much tougher test than they usually see in game one under Rick Barnes. Tennessee played Xavier in the opener in Cuonzo Martin’s last season and VCU in Donnie Tyndall’s opener. Since then, Tennessee has opened with UNC Asheville, Chattanooga, Presbyterian, Lenoir-Rhyne, and Asheville again. This is not a warm-up for Cincinnati on Saturday; the Buffaloes should present a similar challenge.
The loss of Gonzaga will sting on Selection Sunday. Tennessee still gets Kansas in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, but the rest of our shortened non-conference schedule is now Colorado (KenPom #50), Cincinnati (#57), Appalachian State (#192), and a pair of cupcakes in Tennessee Tech (#321) and USC Upstate (#295). With a smaller sample size, it’ll be harder for the selection committee to differentiate between a good SEC team and a good Big East team, etc. Other than yet-to-play Tennessee and 2-0 Florida, conference heavyweights haven’t started clean: Kentucky lost to Richmond and Kansas, LSU lost to Saint Louis, Alabama was blown out by Stanford. For Tennessee, these opening games with Colorado and Cincinnati can go a long way in setting the opening tone.
Wright was one of the best facilitators in the nation last season, both leading the team in scoring (14.4 ppg) and finishing 68th nationally in assist rate. He plays 35 minutes a night and started hot this year, getting 24 in Colorado’s 76-58 win at Kansas State. The Buffaloes have shown no ill effects from a five-game losing streak to end the 2019-20 campaign; they were 21-6 on February 22 before coming apart with an overtime loss to Utah and four others all by at least seven points.
The fun of the Pons potential – the “put him on the other team’s best player every night” scenario – is Wright goes just 6’0″. Last year Colorado also got double-figure scoring from 6’7″ Tyler Bey, a second round pick of the Dallas Mavericks. Now 6’8″ freshman Jabari Walker is off to a nice start, scoring 19 points with nine rebounds in just 32 minutes of work in the first two games. Like Tennessee, Colorado is heavy on seniors and freshmen: 6’6″ Maddox Daniels and 6’7″ Jeriah Horne join Wright as veterans, Keeshawn Barthelemy joins Walker as a freshman seeing significant action.
Boyle’s teams are usually defense-first and excel at taking away second chances. Last year the Buffaloes were 35th nationally in opponent threes attempted, but teams splashed 34.2% of those (234th nationally).
This leads to one of the most interesting questions about Tennessee: how many threes, and who takes them?
At their best two years ago, the Vols shot 36.7% from the arc, 63rd nationally, but finished just 324th in threes attempted. That offense could get what it wanted through great ball movement, a staple of Barnes’ teams here. Last year the Vols were 217th nationally in threes attempted.
The lineups will be fascinating to see by themselves. But in particular, who gets the green light to shoot, and if this thing tightens up late, who gets those looks? Last year Lamonte Turner took 4.3 threes per game while he played, and Jordan Bowden took 5.5. That’s a big chunk of the puzzle. Among returning players, Santiago Vescovi took 5.3, but that number leans a little to his initial minutes. Yves Pons took 2.8, and Josiah James took just over three.
If Vescovi is playing more of the true point guard role this year, how many does he shoot? What about the freshmen? What about Victor Bailey, rumored to be the best shooter on this team the moment he stepped foot in Knoxville?
There is no warm-up, and the outcomes will weigh more heavily in the final analysis than usual. It’s a big game, right away.
And we’re so happy to see you.
6:00 PM ET Tuesday, online at SEC Network+.
Go Vols.
When the 2020 schedule was originally announced, having Georgia near the end was a sigh of relief. Tennessee’s schedule is traditionally so front-loaded, there are few opportunities for meaningful wins in November. And when the schedule was adapted in the pandemic, the Dawgs and Gators essentially switched places, but the impact was the same: something to look forward to, a chance to stay in the hunt in the SEC East, and an ability for the story of your season to get told in its final weeks. Even if you leave the Georgia and Alabama results the same, had the Vols beaten Kentucky, Arkansas, and Auburn, they’d be playing Florida for a chance to create a three-way tie for first place in the SEC East tomorrow.
It’s not that Tennessee would’ve been favored to beat the Gators, or the front-runner for Atlanta even if they did, a scenario that would still require the Vols to beat Texas A&M and Georgia to lose to Missouri. But the feel of all of this, even in a strange year, would be so very different and mean so very much.
The idea of beating Kentucky, Arkansas, and Auburn, even now, feels almost close enough to touch. But what we’ve grasped instead are catastrophic mistakes and inefficient football, leading to five straight losses by double digits, the worst of all firsts this year. And now the Gators, who have felt like the most attainable win among our three biggest rivals for the last four seasons, can feel out of reach.
Florida remains a 17.5-point favorite. In the thirty years we’ve now been playing this rivalry on an annual basis, it is the second-biggest line the Vols have faced in this game, topped only by the, “Is Urban Meyer going to attempt murder on Lane Kiffin?” +30 Tennessee saw in 2009. In happier Decembers, the next one on the list is still the +16.5 the Vols closed at in 2001. That game never feels like the answer to this question because that line was always so ridiculous, but +16.5 is, by Vegas, the biggest upset the Vols have pulled off in at least the last 35 years. That’s the fun part. It’s also the hard part: if you want to entertain idiot optimism for tomorrow, the line holding at +17.5 would require the biggest upset of our generation.
In their first year, Derek Dooley and Butch Jones faced Florida teams coming off Sugar Bowl appearances. Both of those Gators squads would struggle, but we didn’t know that in September and didn’t know anything about the Vols in year one, so Tennessee was understandably +15.5 in 2013 and +13.5 in 2010. But next on the list is 2019, when the Vols closed at +12.5 (all historical lines via covers.com). That means Tennessee has faced two of its six worst odds against the Gators in the last 30 years back-to-back:
And in the last two years, the Vols have earned two of their worst defeats against the Gators in that same span:
In 2007, the Vols actually trailed just 28-20 and had the ball with five minutes to play in the third quarter. A fumbled exchange between Erik Ainge and Arian Foster was returned for a touchdown, and the floodgates ensued. That Florida team had the Heisman winner, a similarity we may find on Saturday. But that Tennessee team still won the SEC East.
In 1994, the Vols have the should’ve-been-eventual Heisman winner, but he was just a freshman and wasn’t thrown to these particular wolves. Instead, Todd Helton ate a shutout in a Knoxville downpour to #1 Florida.
You can find some similar forgiveness in the 2018 game, where the Vols didn’t punt or score a touchdown on their first ten possessions, still one of the strangest sequences in a dozen years of strange around here. The Vols still almost outgained the Gators, continuing a seven year trend in this rivalry from 2012-18 of Tennessee shooting all its toes off. But whatever perception is worth, Jeremy Pruitt’s first Vols were only +3.5 to Dan Mullen’s first Gators.
Last year, the Vols were still quite good at shooting themselves. Tennessee threw an interception in the end zone after a short field in a 7-0 game, then threw another after stopping Florida on fourth down. They allowed Florida to convert a 2nd-and-17 with two minutes left in the first half to push the game to three possessions. And Brian Maurer promptly turned it over on the third play of the third quarter. But the final tally was far more telling: Florida outgained the Vols 441 to 239, and won by 31.
If we get another one of those games tomorrow – Gators by four possessions for the third year in a row – it could simplify the conversation about Tennessee’s future. There’s always math to be done in recruiting and finances, both made fuzzier by the pandemic. But, already at a significant disadvantage against the Tide and Dawgs, if the Vols are blown out by Florida again – if this rivalry also begins to feel out of reach on an annual basis – that would certainly be included in the equation of Tennessee’s future.
But perhaps the conversation could be simplified in another direction.
We know midseason replacement quarterbacks at Tennessee tend to struggle in their first start. That is indeed what it seems Harrison Bailey will get against the Gators. But if Bailey can provide a real spark offensively – setting aside what Tennessee’s defense may or may not be able to do against the Kyles – the conversation about Tennessee’s future could be simplified as well: “Let’s see what this kid can do.”
It’s worth noting, to me, that if Jarrett Guarantano takes a snap in Tennessee’s last three games (or three of four should the Vols actually find their way to a bowl), he’ll trail only Peyton Manning and Casey Clausen in total appearances by a quarterback at Tennessee in my lifetime (data via sports-reference.com; shout out to Andy Kelly who is technically higher on the appearance list thanks to his work as a pooch punter early in his career).
Guarantano has seen action as Tennessee’s quarterback on 41 different occasions. There is no one really to compare him to, so unique has his time been for so long, and so frustrating Tennessee’s inability to get better both through and around him. I have no doubt that he’s taken more hits than any Tennessee quarterback, ever. He deserves, truly, our gratitude for that.
If he takes a snap in three more games – Bailey could get hurt on the first play, who knows – the guy he’ll pass for third place on the QB appearance list is Erik Ainge. Sixteen years ago, Erik Ainge was a true freshman who didn’t get spring practice. He and fellow freshman Brent Schaeffer helped the Vols beat UNLV in the opener, then got the Gators.
Schaeffer started and went 3-for-4 for 40 yards, plus 38 yards on seven carries. Ainge finished with 16-of-24 for 192 yards, an interception, and three touchdowns. And the Vols won, in memorable fashion.
In the UNLV recap at ESPN.com, there’s a note I’d forgotten: Schaeffer was the first true freshman quarterback to start in the SEC since 1945. 2004 can feel as far from 1945 as 2020 feels from 2004, both for freshman quarterbacks and for Tennessee. The Vols were actually the favorite against Florida in 2004 at -3, so the expectation is certainly different for Harrison Bailey. But an opportunity to simplify the conversation in a positive direction makes tomorrow afternoon meaningful, for him and the Vols. It’s certainly not the kind of meaning we were looking for at the start of the season. But it has a chance to be a truly important Saturday either way.
Last year when Brian Maurer got his first career start against Georgia, we ran the numbers on Tennessee’s midseason replacement quarterbacks in their first start. These are the guys that, for reasons good and bad, didn’t win the job in fall camp, but took over at some point during the season.
It’s interesting how many quarterbacks get their first start this way, whether that’s through injury, youth movement, or just poor play from the incumbent. In the last 30 years, I believe only Heath Shuler, Jerry Colquitt, Tee Martin, Joey Mathews, Brent Schaeffer, Matt Simms, and Quinten Dormady made their first start at Tennessee in a season opener.
When you go to the backup mid-year, it typically means some other things are going wrong too, and your starter can’t just manage the game and still win. And at Tennessee, there certainly isn’t an abundance of great football in the last decade-plus. But one thing we noted in the piece last year already changed with Maurer: the first starts for Guarantano, Dobbs, Peterman, and Worley produced zero offensive touchdowns. Maurer came out firing with a pair of touchdown passes in the first half, and the Vols were still in that game late in the third quarter. Georgia led 29-14 but the Vols had 1st-and-10 at midfield when Maurer threw an interception; Tennessee actually stopped Georgia on 4th-and-1 on the next drive, giving the Vols another first down at midfield. But a false start and a sack ended that threat, and Georgia added two scores in the fourth quarter.
So: you can be feisty with the new guy against elite competition, and Jim Chaney was of course at the trigger for that game. Victory, of course, is much harder to come by:
(If the table looks strange, rotate your phone)
| QB | Opponent | CMP | ATT | YDS | TD | INT | RESULT |
| Maurer | #3 Georgia | 14 | 28 | 259 | 2 | 1 | L 43-14 |
| Guarantano | S. Carolina | 11 | 18 | 133 | 0 | 0 | L 15-9 |
| Dobbs | #9 Missouri | 26 | 42 | 240 | 0 | 2 | L 31-3 |
| Peterman | #19 Florida | 4 | 11 | 5 | 0 | 2 | L 31-17 |
| Worley | #13 S. Carolina | 10 | 26 | 105 | 0 | 2 | L 14-3 |
| Bray | Memphis | 19 | 33 | 333 | 5 | 0 | W 50-14 |
| Stephens | #10 Georgia | 13 | 30 | 208 | 2 | 0 | L 26-14 |
| Crompton | #11 Arkansas | 16 | 34 | 174 | 2 | 1 | L 31-14 |
| R. Clausen | Vanderbilt | 19 | 30 | 189 | 2 | 2 | W 38-33 |
| Ainge | #8 Auburn | 17 | 35 | 173 | 1 | 4 | L 34-10 |
If it’s indeed Harrison Bailey on Saturday, he certainly won’t be the first Vol QB to get his first action against a Top 10 foe. And perhaps the up-tempo nature of the game in 2020 will give him additional opportunities to flourish. But victory – unless you’re playing our in-state friends from Nashville or Memphis – is a big ask.
Some of these guys obviously went on to excellent careers. Erik Ainge and Josh Dobbs, in particular, overcame some frustrating freshman performances to be two of the best we’ve seen at the position in Knoxville. So don’t judge Bailey too much on the first impression, especially when it comes in the middle of the year.
(…unless he’s great. Then lean all the way into it.)
Why does it feel like things constantly go against the Vols? Because in one of football’s most telling statistics, things have indeed gone against Tennessee for a very long time.
The 2020 Vols are -3 in turnovers through seven games: 8 takeaways, 11 giveaways. Statistical comparisons are difficult this year, with teams playing an uneven number of games. And it’s fruitless to compare this season to others outright: you tend to look worse when an FCS opponent isn’t on the schedule.
But we can compare what these Vols are doing to what their predecessors did in conference play, the most helpful comparison in a year in need of understanding.
And when it comes to turnover margin in SEC play, the Vols have been very bad for a very long time.
Everything feels worse this year because so many of Tennessee’s turnovers are getting returned for touchdowns. Especially against Auburn, as Jeremy Pruitt noted, that play could’ve been the difference between winning and losing. But to find the kind of success this program is hungry for, the Vols will have to do more than stop throwing the occasional pick six.
The Vols haven’t had a positive turnover margin in SEC play since 2009. They broke even the following year, and have been in the negative in each of the nine years since, and three in the hole in 2020. From 2011-2020, the Vols are -42 in turnovers in 79 SEC games.
Winning football, this is not.
The turnover volume this year isn’t unusual, but that’s only because Tennessee has been so bad at it for so long:
(data via SportSource Analytics)
| Year | Turnover Margin in SEC games |
| 2020 | -3 |
| 2019 | -5 |
| 2018 | -4 |
| 2017 | -4 |
| 2016 | -5 |
| 2015 | -1 |
| 2014 | -3 |
| 2013 | -5 |
| 2012 | -9 |
| 2011 | -3 |
| 2010 | 0 |
| 2009 | 6 |
So all these things can be true: the Vols have been especially crushed by pick sixes and poorly-timed turnovers this season. Jarrett Guarantano continues to struggle with quality, not quantity when he turns it over. But the Vols have been on the wrong side of this conversation for a literal decade, so saying this year isn’t unusual carries the connotation that we’re used to giving away a possession every other game.
To be sure, one game can swing the conversation. The 2015 Vols finished 28th nationally in turnover margin in all games by going +4 in the Outback Bowl against Northwestern. The 2016 Vols went +4 against Virginia Tech, -4 at Texas A&M, -3 at South Carolina, +4 against Missouri. Lane Kiffin’s team did this best in league play, but only after an excruciating -3 against UCLA. But overall, the Vols haven’t landed in the black since then.
We struggle to make any good comparison to this year, but the closest in football might be 2005. The stakes were much higher then as a preseason Top 5 team and the defending SEC East champs. But the Vols never got the quarterback situation figured out between Erik Ainge and Rick Clausen, and finished a disastrous -7 overall in turnover margin, including catastrophic fumbles at the goal line against Alabama and South Carolina that cost the Vols both games.
If you’re trying to piece together what went wrong this year, the most simple explanation is the defensive touchdowns allowed. But to get where we all want to go, the program has to get on the right side of the turnover battle. Create more havoc defensively: the Vols haven’t finished inside the Top 30 in total takeaways since 2010. And find a better sweet spot offensively between taking no chances and putting ourselves in a bad situation.
It’s hard to find a good comparison to this football season in Tennessee’s history. That’s fitting, given there is no comparison to the way the virus has impacted this year. A good question for all of us, and one we struggled with on the podcast after the Arkansas loss, is how to even discuss the role of the virus in this team’s struggles. Every team in America is dealing with it, so while it may be a unique challenge for some players – most notably Harrison Bailey’s situation in trying to get a freshman quarterback ready – it’s a shared experience in college football. I think if we ended this year with a bunch of random results, it would now feel almost natural to shrug our shoulders and say, “Who knows, let’s see what happens next year.”
But Tennessee’s results, after the first ten quarters, haven’t been random. They’ve been, so far, among some of the worst we’ve ever seen in Knoxville: the Vols and their offense continue to be operating at historic lows, with #23 Auburn and two Top 6 teams still to come. The narrative of the season, so far, has been that when the Vols faced adversity, they fell down a steep hill.
Even last season, as unique as it felt at the time, found some natural comparisons to 1988. To be fair, that’s a comparison we wanted to make, because of what it led the Vols to the following season and beyond. That team was resilient, not just in the second half of the season, but in the second half of games:
The fall from where we were at halftime of the Georgia game this year to where we are now is dizzying. Tennessee scored 12 touchdowns in the first 10 quarters this season. They’ve scored four touchdowns in the last 14 quarters, one of those down 42-10 to Alabama. It feels like, “We could beat Georgia,” has become, “Can we beat anybody?”
Here are Tennessee’s offensive and defensive numbers from the first and second half this season (stats via SportSource Analytics):
| Rushing Off. | 1H | 2H |
| Attempts | 127 | 113 |
| Yards | 517 | 346 |
| YPC | 4.07 | 3.06 |
| Rushing Def. | 1H | 2H |
| Attempts | 124 | 128 |
| Yards | 438 | 525 |
| YPC | 3.53 | 4.1 |
| Passing Off. | 1H | 2H |
| Completions | 52 | 45 |
| Attempts | 83 | 80 |
| Completion % | 62.7 | 56.3 |
| Yards | 586 | 462 |
| YPA | 7.06 | 5.78 |
| Passing Def. | 1H | 2H |
| Completions | 57 | 57 |
| Attempts | 86 | 82 |
| Completion % | 66.3 | 69.5 |
| Yards | 680 | 805 |
| YPA | 7.9 | 9.82 |
Getting just three yards per carry in the second half while allowing nearly ten yards per pass attempt in the second half is still jarring to look at. The Vols have not allowed a touchdown pass in the first half…and have allowed seven in the second half.
Why does this team struggle to respond to adversity, especially when last year’s team was so good at it? Does the virus play a role here in any human being’s ability to respond, especially an 18-22 year old who did not sign up for any of this in their SEC football experience? If so, how much?
When the conversation shifts so far from random to bad football, it’s simply hard to find the right words to call it much of anything else. As we learned last season, there is certainly still time. The Vols still have meaningful opportunities left this season if they can play meaningful football themselves. Perhaps Harrison Bailey will provide some hope, or a healthy Jarrett Guarantano will find the same magic he delivered at Auburn two years ago.
We would settle for weirdness, because we would at least understand it. In an uncertain year, will these last four games contain any surprises? And can Tennessee find a way to make any of them go our way?
