We often talk of the similarities in Tennessee’s historical football and basketball DNA when it comes to our biggest rivals: no one has beaten Alabama football or Kentucky basketball more than the Vols. In nearly 30 years of divisional play, the Vols fell into a similar pattern with Florida in […]
Author: Will Shelton
Absence
I wore orange to work today, even though I figured they wouldn’t really play basketball at 1:00 PM ET in Nashville. Since moving back to Virginia I’ve acquired more brand-free orange so as to be somewhat less obnoxious to my neighbors here in Hokieland. It’s convenient, since both of the […]
Any Run Would Be Remarkable: On Tennessee’s Workload
When you’re putting together dream scenarios for the Vols to run through Nashville and win the SEC Tournament, a few things might wake you from sleep. Tennessee hasn’t won four games in a row since starting the season 5-0. If you make it through Thursday, the league champion awaits on […]
Tennessee Bubble Math: To The End
A tip of the cap to the 2018 and 2019 Vols, for whom no such fun was required and we spent the first week of March trying to figure out what makes a one seed. I’d be happy to write those posts every year. But in this year, to get […]
Tennessee 81 Kentucky 73: Rick Barnes Does Not Believe in Ghosts
We’ll get to bubble math. Believe me, we will. And, oh yes, we’re going to discuss Rick Barnes being 7-5 against Kentucky at Tennessee, and now the only Vol coach to win two games at Rupp Arena. But for now, let’s just set all that aside and take this win […]
Tennessee at Kentucky: Ruthlessly Efficient
Can you guess how many Quad 1 wins Tennessee has right now? It’s one: at Alabama on February 4. In this #anyonecanwin season, Tennessee’s schedule is guilty of a particularly cruel betrayal. For more than a month we’ve been saying if the Vols just get to 18 or 19 regular […]
Tennessee 63 Florida 58: Still
Here’s the movie we’ve seen recently when the Vols weren’t in the chase for the national championship: 2015: Donnie Tyndall’s Vols were 14-9 (6-5) on February 11, with an eye on at least the NIT. They lost five in a row, three by 17+, and finished the regular season 15-15 […]
Tennessee Turnover Rate
We use Ken Pomeroy’s numbers a lot around here, and Joel writes a Four Factors preview for each contest. It’s the backbone of Pomeroy’s ratings: how well do you shoot it, how often do you turn it over, how many second chances do you give yourself via offensive rebounds, and […]
Auburn 73 Tennessee 66 – It Hurts More This Way
This team plays so hard so often. It gets more from Yves Pons than we bargained for at the start of the year and more from John Fulkerson that we had to have as the year went on. It gets more from Santiago Vescovi than anyone in his situation should […]
Tennessee at Auburn: The Gauntlet We Need
In the KenPom era (2002-present), Tennessee’s average strength of schedule is 27th nationally. The last three years it ranked 16th, 11th, and 25th. By this metric Tennessee played a Top 25 schedule four times in Bruce Pearl’s tenure, and never finished lower than 34th in those six years. And though […]