Author Archives: Will Shelton

It’s one thing to hit four game-winners (or send-it-to-overtimers) in your career. Lamonte Turner hit the biggest shot in three of Tennessee’s biggest wins the last two years, plus a fourth last month that could prove incredibly helpful as this team now scrambles for the bracket:

The Purdue win in the Bahamas started all of this. The win at Rupp was 2018’s biggest. And the win over Kentucky in the 2019 SEC Tournament doesn’t earn any banners like an SEC title or the Sweet 16, but was a crowning achievement for this program and its last two teams.

This team is 8-3 and not 7-4 in part because Lamonte splashed that three against VCU, giving Tennessee a pair of Top 50 wins in KenPom. We will need them.

Turner’s Tennessee career is over, shut down with upcoming shoulder surgery that will hopefully enable his basketball career to continue on a professional level. The timing is jarring, but the news not all that surprising; we’ve watched Lamonte struggle with his shoulder for multiple seasons. To his credit, as we pointed out after the Cincinnati loss, each time he got better as the year went along: one of the best three-point shooters in the SEC in 2018, one of the best two-point shooters in the SEC in 2019. But I’m sure at a certain point there’s no getting better without shutting it all down.

It’s funny how quickly things can change: gone, just like that, are five of the six faces that made the last two years so very memorable. Thanks in large part to the performances of those teams, new faces we hope will be equally memorable are on the way next season.

In the middle is the rest of this season: one senior in Jordan Bowden, and only eight scholarship players left on the roster. Let’s push pause on point guard Santiago Vescovi, who will be eligible to play after the fall semester (similar to Jarnell Stokes as a freshman). Barnes originally said there was little chance he played this season; those chances hit a growth spurt over the weekend.

But even if you don’t include Vescovi in this group, next season you’ll have Keon Johnson, Jaden Springer, Corey Walker, Uros Plavsic, and Oregon transfer Victor Bailey. Those five plus Vescovi and Josiah James will make for a core group of seven players that weren’t around in 2019. Fulkerson and Pons will be seniors; that’s nine.

I point that out to say this: the guys Tennessee will have to rely on right now – Olivier Nkamhoua, Davonte Gaines, Drew Pember, Jalen Johnson – have an opportunity to carve out a bigger role for themselves this season, before the body count ups the competition for everyone next season. There will be a separate conversation about finding the right mix with so many new faces next season. For now, these eight players – Bowden, James, Fulkerson, Pons, Nkamhoua, Gaines, Pember, and Johnson (plus Vescovi, maybe) – have the rest of the 2020 season in front of them.

Tennessee is a six seed in the December 20 Bracket Matrix, appearing in 16 of 18 brackets that have been updated since the Cincinnati loss at anywhere from a five to an eleven seed. The Vols host Wisconsin (#51 KenPom) on Saturday and travel to Kansas on January 25 in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. Everything else is the SEC.

Cincinnati wasn’t a great loss, but the Vols made it through the non-conference without any truly bad losses. And there are really only two options for such a thing in the SEC: first-year coaches at Texas A&M, who the Vols face in Knoxville, and Vanderbilt, who the Vols play twice. Those two teams currently hover around 140th in KenPom. The league doesn’t appear to have an elite team; we’ll see about Auburn, who’s 11-0 but hasn’t played anyone better than NC State (36th in KenPom). The Tigers have run through the Bruce Pearl special of really good mid-majors, beating Davidson, Colgate, New Mexico, Richmond, Furman, and Saint Louis.

Still, while there are no SEC teams in the KenPom Top 10, the league’s top tier places four teams in the Top 30 plus Arkansas at 37. Everyone other than A&M and Vanderbilt is in the Top 90.

We’ll preview the conference more fully after Wisconsin, but I say all that to say this: Tennessee just needs wins. The Vols beat Washington and VCU and avoided catastrophe. A 12-8 finish gets Tennessee to 20-11 on the year. The schedule and the league should be good enough that I don’t think we’ll end up arguing about which wins they did or didn’t get if it comes down to the bubble (though keep in mind, Tennessee’s SEC schedule is insanely back-loaded; some of this conversation will just have to wait until mid-February).

And right now, just making the tournament is a good goal for this team. We would’ve been talking about a rebuilding year from the beginning if Lamonte wasn’t going to be around. Now, it’s rebuilding on the fly. How might it look without #1 out there?

The first question is simple math. In every game that’s been in doubt in the second half this season (other than Cincinnati when he picked up two fouls early), Lamonte has played between 36-40 minutes. Against the Bearcats, Davonte Gaines was the beneficiary in the first half: 17 minutes and four points, all at the stripe. Jalen Johnson has more experience and might get the start against the Badgers, but the coaching staff appears to trust Gaines more already.

Tennessee averages right at 16 assists per game, and is eighth nationally in assist percentage. Lamonte was responsible for more than seven assists per game. So now, who facilitates the offense?

Again, put a pin in Vescovi. Your other options for primary ball-handler are Jordan Bowden and Josiah James. Many of us assumed coming into the year that James would get backup point guard minutes, but in big games Lamonte just basically played the whole time. That’s one question with Josiah: is he the point guard next year? If that’s the idea, he’s about to get a lot of practice. The alternative is Bowden, who went from being the third scoring option on the floor to the first. His three-point percentage is still solid (37.3%), but his effective field goal percentage is down from last year because his looks have been much more difficult. What changes with his game if you put the ball in his hands much more often? Can one or both of these guys still run Tennessee’s offense in a way that creates non-difficult opportunities for Fulkerson and Pons?

Even before Lamonte got hurt, the Memphis and Cincinnati games showed, in good and bad ways, how much this team needs its defense. Lamonte was Tennessee’s best perimeter defender in terms of forcing turnovers both this year and last year. This is probably the biggest question for Davonte Gaines, Jalen Johnson, and anyone else getting ready to play more minutes: where are you on this end of the floor?

More on Wisconsin after Christmas, but the Badgers do play at Tennessee’s pace and rely on 6’11” center Nate Reuvers for a lot of what they do. We’ll learn more about what the Vols can do without Turner against strong guard play when LSU comes to town the following Saturday.

Turner’s absence is heartbreaking, but he leaves with incredible memories behind and hopefully a professional basketball future ahead. Tennessee as a team has the same memories in the past and a bright hope for the future. In the now, this team will try to make the tournament while answering big questions for the future. It’s an interesting moment for Josiah James, and a big opportunity for Davonte Gaines, Jalen Johnson, and everyone else with a chance to make a name for themselves a little earlier than they thought.

What are we most concerned about?

Lamonte Turner’s shoulder is an issue that may not go away. I hate that for him most of all; via KenPom, Turner shot 45.2% in conference play from the arc in 2018, second-best in the SEC. Then he shot 61% from inside the arc in league play last year, seventh-best. In both cases he got better as the year went along, so maybe there’s some hope there. But this year he’s shooting 23.4% from the arc (11-of-47) and 32.9% inside it. He’s still 11th nationally in assist rate, but when he’s removed as a scoring option those assists get much harder to come by as defenses adjust elsewhere.

Three point shooting again wasn’t great – 3-of-15 – but at least this time the Vols didn’t settle for 26+. After starting the season hot as a team, now only Jordan Bowden (36.7% and working hard for a clean look) and Yves Pons (32.3%) are above 30% from the arc; the Vols are at 29.7% as a team, 280th nationally. Tennessee has played a handful of really good defenses, but Cincinnati was not among them.

Tennessee’s own defense, great all year, failed them last night. The Bearcats shot 56.4% from the floor with an effective field goal percentage of 60.9%. Only Purdue, with their flame-throwing 15 threes, hit better than 60% eFG% against the Vols last season, when defense didn’t have to be such a priority. This team now has little choice to prioritize anything else.

One thing that might encompass all of this: everyone playing a new role. Lamonte, shoulder at whatever percentage, is carrying an incredible load at point guard. Bowden, the beneficiary of being the third-through-fifth option last season depending on who else was on the floor, is now asked to be the primary. When Tennessee’s offense has worked well – Washington and VCU – the formula has included some combination of Bowden hitting shots, Turner getting to the free throw line, and consistent inside scoring from Pons (Washington) or Fulkerson (VCU). We were hopeful this model could win games while Josiah James came along and the freshmen off the bench sorted themselves out.

But when that formula gets disrupted, defense is the only option. It genuinely gave Tennessee a chance to beat Memphis anyway. When defense goes away, there’s little the Vols can do until a new formula arrives or a freshman emerges. Last night Cincinnati’s two best players had four fouls early in the second half. It made little difference.

The preseason thought was a split of the six big non-conference games before Kansas would earn a “that’s about right” head nod. When the Vols handled Washington, lost to Florida State for obvious turnover-related reasons, then beat VCU while Cincinnati and Wisconsin struggled, we could get appropriately greedy. That early split is still available if the Vols beat Wisconsin, but as always, we’re adjusting on the fly.

The Vols dropped to 29th in KenPom (55th offense, 19th defense), which projects them to finish 20-11 in the regular season. The Vols host Jacksonville State on Saturday, then Wisconsin the following Saturday, then SEC play begins with a visit from LSU (shout out to Steve Forbes) on Saturday, January 4. The Vols go to Kansas in late January for the SEC/Big 12 Challenge.

One point we’ll make when we get to league play: for the second year in a row, Tennessee’s SEC schedule is ridiculously back-loaded. The best non-Vol teams in the league – Kentucky, Auburn, Florida, and Arkansas – don’t appear on the schedule at all until February 8 (Cats in Knoxville), and Tennessee’s last five games are exclusively against that tier (at Auburn, at Arkansas, vs Florida, at Kentucky, vs Auburn). So whatever we think we’re learning about this team in league play will come with a, “Well, we’ll see…”. Tennessee can change a lot of its bracket fate, good or bad, in those last three weeks. Until then, and as usual, everything is about getting better:

“It only hurts because it’s Memphis.”

I’m stealing that line from old friend of the blog Chris Pendley, and it’s true. If the Vols shot 4-of-26 from three in just about any other game and still almost win, you shrug your shoulders and move on to the next one. If the Vols continue to take 26 threes per game or make only four of them, then you panic. It’s early, but right now the Vols sit 282nd in KenPom’s luck ratings.

Tennessee is 2-2 in marquee non-conference affairs. The two that remain before the calendar turns to 2020 were originally thought to be the biggest tests. But while the Vols are on pace for about what we thought they’d be – still projecting at 21 regular season wins in KenPom, a six seed in the Bracket Matrix, 21st in the AP poll and 25th in NET – Cincinnati and Wisconsin have taken a turn for the worst.

The Rick Barnes What-If Bowl

With Barnes in Knoxville, Mick Cronin left Cincinnati after 13 years and took the UCLA job.

(Quick sidenote: I still do a lot of reading from SB Nation blogs, especially when we’re playing teams outside the SEC. If you’ve followed us throughout the years at Rocky Top Talk, here, or enjoy the good work done by fans of other teams writing in a freelance capacity, you might be interested to learn more about what’s happening to those who write for California-based teams. Bruins Nation was one of the first SB Nation sites I interacted with after starting at Rocky Top Talk when Kiffin was hired, and always found good writing and analysis there whenever I was curious about something happening at UCLA. All the best to their team.)

Steve Alford’s last two years at Westwood saw a loss in Dayton and a 17-16 finish. Mick Cronin is 7-4 in the early stages there. Meanwhile, John Brannen is in his first year at Cincinnati after four years and two NCAA Tournament appearances at Northern Kentucky.

We almost ran into these guys in each of the last two seasons. Last year the Bearcats lost to Iowa in the first round before we beat the Hawkeyes in the second. And two years ago Cincinnati was the two seed in our region, falling to Nevada in round two the same day we lost to Loyola Chicago.

They brought back their top three scorers, but have stumbled out of the gates. Some of it is strength of schedule: losses on the road to usually-good Xavier and an unusually-good Ohio State team, currently number one in KenPom. Cincinnati also did something I’m not sure I’ve seen before: three straight overtime games, including a loss to Bowling Green and wins over Valparaiso and UNLV. Their last game was particularly costly: Colgate – who is feisty, as we’ll attest to – won at Cincinnati as a result of this endgame sequence:

The thought coming into the year was these six teams – Washington, Florida State, VCU/Purdue, Memphis, Cincinnati, and Wisconsin – were all on Tennessee’s level, all somewhere between a 4-8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. In the Bracket Matrix this week, it mostly holds up: the Vols at six, Washington at eight, Florida State at four, VCU down a bit at 10, Memphis at five. But Cincinnati appears in just one entry in the matrix, and Wisconsin – 5-5 and headed to Knoxville on December 28 – is in just three (of 27).

First-Year Problems (and Solutions?)

The Bearcats returned leading scorer Jarron Cumberland (18.8 per game last year), added his cousin Jaevin as a grad transfer from Oakland, and brought back guard Keith Williams and 6’8″ forward Tre Scott, all upperclassmen. But this team has problems that look like what a first-year coach might expect: after leading the nation in fewest steals allowed in 2019, Cincinnati is 281st in turnover percentage this season and 323rd in non-steal turnovers.

There’s also the emergence of 7’1″ Chris Vogt who transferred in with Brannen from Northern Kentucky. After playing less than 20 minutes in the first two games, he’s emerged as a primary option: double figure scoring in every game after the opener at Ohio State, 16 points in 26 minutes against Colgate, 24th nationally in effective field goal percentage. Foul trouble can be an issue with him, but we’ll yet again get to see the Vols at a size disadvantage.

Like the Memphis game, there’s a part of me that wants to type, “This should be a game Tennessee’s veterans win.” Tennessee’s defense – now 11th nationally in KenPom and fifth in effective field goal percentage allowed – can take advantage of a turnover-prone team still learning a new system. Having played Ohio State, the Bearcats won’t be intimidated by the #21 Vols. But Tennessee’s best basketball this season won’t be about intimidation. If the mantra after Florida State was straightforward, not spectacular, I think it’s still true after Memphis…I’d just add, “And don’t miss 22 threes.”

We’ll see what we learned at 7:00 PM ET tonight on ESPN2, or if any learning was necessary if the Vols can knock down open threes.

The biggest thing I thought Memphis could do to hurt Tennessee was get the Vols in foul trouble, which they absolutely did in the first half. Fortunately, Tennessee got big minutes from Drew Pember and a hot start from Josiah James. Memphis turned it over 11 times in the first 20 minutes, handing Tennessee a 17-5 lead. But the Vols couldn’t run away with it, and a late barrage gave Memphis a one-point halftime lead.

Foul trouble was a non-issue in the second half. In a low-scoring affair, the Vols got some nice buckets from Yves Pons and John Fulkerson; Fulkerson played one of the best games of his career on the defensive end. Both Pons and Fulkerson missed crucial free throws, but the Vols went 13-of-18 (72.2%) from the stripe on the day.

It didn’t look like it was a big part of the Memphis gameplan coming in, but as the day went along a common theme emerged for Tennessee: open looks from three that didn’t go down.

James hit three in the first half. He finished 3-of-6 with a big miss late. Jordan Bowden hit a really tough three in the second half. It was Tennessee’s only other make of the day. The Vols were shooting 33% from the arc coming in. They went 4-of-26 (15.4%). Non-James players went 1-of-20.

Memphis came in shooting 30% from the arc. They didn’t take many, as you’d expect. But they hit some big ones in the second half. Memphis had a four-point lead for 90 seconds with 12 minutes to play. The next time the game was at two possessions was Alex Lomax’s free throws with eight seconds left. In a game like that, threes are daggers. The Tigers took the lead on their final made three with 1:48 to play. The Vols had a deep miss from Lamonte Turner, the aforementioned miss from Josiah James, and Yves Pons missing the front end of a 1-and-1 on the offensive rebound.

This was Tennessee’s worst three-point shooting day since the season opener against Chattanooga in 2016-17 (1-for-16) and two games against Frank Martin’s eventual Final Four squad the same year.

You can take all the emotion from this rivalry – all the ways you want to win anyway, all the amplification from the Penny Hardaway stuff (who was gracious in victory), the nation’s longest home winning streak, all of that – but Tennessee simply cannot survive 4-of-26 from the arc. Most of them were good looks. Almost all of them didn’t go down.

At some point, maybe we’ll look at that and say it’s a good thing since the Vols almost won anyway. Today is not that day. There will be an ongoing conversation about Lamonte Turner’s shoulders (1-for-11 today), but I’m sure everything that can be done about that is already being done.

The result we got today makes sense given how we got there. But how we got there was unexpected, fairly unprecedented, and absolutely no fun.

The Vols will have to rebound quickly, heading to Cincinnati on Wednesday night. The rubber match with Memphis is next season in Nashville.

Thompson-Boling Arena’s official capacity is 21,678. The last two years, the Vols listed an official attendance above capacity five times:

How often do the Vols play a ranked non-conference opponent at home? Since Bruce Pearl’s arrival in 2005-06:

Put all those ingredients plus everything about the Tennessee-Memphis rivalry in a bowl; it’ll do a good enough job of mixing itself up. Tomorrow is the first of what should become five Saturday sellouts for the Vols (Wisconsin, LSU, Kentucky, Florida, Auburn). But it might end up being the loudest one of all.

Give me all the freshmen you have.

Even with James Wiseman still ineligible and Lester Quinones out with a broken hand, the number of freshmen Memphis will put on the floor is unusual. Start with 6’9″ Precious Achiuwa, who has seen his minutes and production increase to become the team’s number one option. He had 25 in their 87-86 win over Ole Miss on November 23, and he will get to the free throw line: 10 attempts vs the Rebels, 20 against Alcorn State. He’s only shooting 53.3% once he gets there, but for a Tennessee team playing a short bench, his ability to get to the line is of significance. As a team, Memphis is sixth nationally in free throw rate.

This team wants to run: Memphis is 10th nationally in tempo (stats via KenPom), and guards Damion Baugh (freshman) and Alex Lomax (sophomore) both hover around the Top 100 in assist rate.

And, much like the Washington, Florida State, and VCU teams the Vols saw already, Memphis relies on a lot of shot-blocking. The Tigers are statistically the best at it of that group, currently third nationally. But the other three are all in the Top 15. With Memphis, without Wiseman it’s less pure size and more about athleticism: Achiuwa and 6’7″ freshman D.J. Jeffries are both in the Top 150 in shot blocking percentage.

The good news here: despite having played three excellent shot-blocking teams thus far, the Vols are still 63rd nationally in fewest shots blocked by percentage. Some of it is the fearlessness of a guy like Yves Pons, sure. But credit John Fulkerson for being such a high-percentage player against great shot-blocking teams: Fulky is 56th nationally from inside the arc (69.2%), which also makes him 22nd nationally in effective field goal percentage at that number since he doesn’t take any threes. The Vols have done a good job both getting him high-percentage looks, and encouraging him to shoot more.

The most straightforward way to talk about Tennessee is to look at Lamonte Turner – eight turnovers in our only loss – and put a lot of where we go on how he’s playing. But how he’s playing, outside of that game, is truly excellent as a point guard: fifth nationally in assist rate, including a pair of 12+ assist games against not-bad teams from Murray State and Chattanooga. There’s nothing about this or, apparently, any moment that’s going to scare him. But Tennessee needs him to choose the straightforward over the spectacular, which is where he got in trouble against the Seminoles. If he does that, the Vols have already gotten the best of a lot of what Memphis likes to do when it was wearing other uniforms.

Maybe the best news of all for Tennessee: last year’s team was led by its offense because you could generally rely on what you were going to get from Williams, Schofield, and Bone. But this year’s team has switched to being led by its defense, which is a more reliable option night in and night out. It traveled to Toronto and Destin. It helped Tennessee survive an early barrage of threes from Murray State. And – if it can stay out of foul trouble, as it usually does – it should handle all the emotion in the building on Saturday.

We’re too early in the year to think big picture, but the ultimate magic numbers in KenPom are always having both a Top 20 offense and defense. The 2018 Vols had the defense. The 2019 Vols had the nation’s third-best offense, but I would say lost a tiny bit of urgency defensively. So far this year, the Vols are 32nd in offense but 14th in defense. It’s the best model to survive and advance for this year’s squad, especially as Olivier Nkamhoua and Josiah Jones James mature.

What could be an all-timer Thompson-Boling crowd will do everything it can to take Memphis, its freshmen, and its coach out of their element. If Tennessee plays within theirs, the Vols should win.

3:00 PM Saturday with Dickie V on the mothership, baby.

Prepare yourselves.

Go Vols.

For an argument built around which program needs to play the other more, it sure would be a shame to see the series slip away when both teams have so much going for them.

The Vols and Tigers first met in Oklahoma City in December 1969. It was another two decades before the next meeting, and at that point Memphis was rolling: seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 1982-89, including a Final Four in 1985. The Vols went dancing seven of eight years from 1976-83, but Don DeVoe’s squads struck out the next five seasons until one final appearance in his tenure in 1989, the same season Tennessee and Memphis began an annual series.

Tennessee won the first one that year 76-74, and the teams traded blows over the next four games, including a Vol win in the 1990 postseason NIT. Memphis won 74-72 in Knoxville in November 1990.

And then Penny Hardaway got two shots at the Vols. Tennessee won 65-64 in Memphis in December 1991. Back in Knoxville the following season with the Tigers ranked #8:

The rivalry survived Allan Houston vs. Penny Hardaway: Memphis won the next three, then the Vols won five in a row. The Tigers claimed a two point win in December 2001.

And then the series took a break after playing every year from 1988-89 to 2001-02.

The Turn of the Century

Older fans may have different and deeper reasons that fuel this rivalry. For Tennessee fans of my generation, who watched Houston beat Penny when we were kids? The animosity revolves around the arrival of John Calipari.

Penny’s 1991-92 squad made the Elite Eight. The Tigers were back in the Sweet 16 in 1995, then bounced in the first round in 1996. And then Memphis missed the NCAA Tournament four years in a row. Calipari, he of a vacated Final Four at UMass in 1996 and 2.25 years with the New Jersey Nets, became the new head coach at Memphis for the 2000-01 season. And the rivalry was almost immediately discontinued.

While Memphis was missing the NCAA Tournament four years in a row in the late 90’s, Tennessee ascended under Jerry Green. But much of the work was being done by Kevin O’Neill’s recruits, including highly coveted point guard Tony Harris from Memphis.

Meanwhile, the rise of Tennessee football to its most dominant era in program history happened to coincide with the basketball series being played annually. The Vols and Tigers met six times in the 1980’s in football: three in Knoxville, three in Memphis. That format continued into the 90’s, with the Vols winning in 1991, 1992, and 1994 before Memphis infamously beat the Vols in 1996 (a game we talked a lot about when Tennessee lost to Georgia State). It remains the only win Memphis has ever recorded over Tennessee in football.

The series took three years off, then resumed in what looks like a two-for-one fashion: games in Knoxville in 1999 and 2001, with a return to Memphis in 2000. By that point the Vols were regularly competing for the national title, and Memphis was still mired in misery: between 1972 and 2002, the Tigers never made a bowl game.

At the turn of the century, there was little reason for Tennessee to play a 50-50 home-and-home series with Memphis in football; the Vols’ national profile made it easy to recruit in West Tennessee even without being there every few years. Meanwhile in basketball, Tennessee made the NCAA Tournament four years in a row from 1998-2001 with Tony Harris at point guard, while Memphis was absent from 1997-2002.

With Calipari eager to rebuild the Tigers and keep Tennessee out of Memphis, and Tennessee football finding little motivation to play the Tigers six times in ten years, both series took a break: three years in basketball, four years in football. In that time, Buzz Peterson’s era found the Vols on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament, Tennessee football’s ceiling was lowered a bit, and Calipari got the Tigers going again: an NIT title in 2002, back in the NCAA Tournament the next two years, and the NIT semifinals in 2005.

A deal was struck to put the basketball rivalry back on an annual basis, with home-and-home football games in 2005-06 and 2009-10. Tennessee hired Bruce Pearl. And oh boy.

As Good As It Gets?

Calipari’s distaste for this annual rivalry wasn’t built on Memphis already arriving on the national scene: when the Vols and Tigers resumed on the hardwood in January 2006, Memphis still hadn’t made the Sweet 16 since 1995. But that changed immediately: Calipari’s Tigers made two Elite Eight’s, the title game, and the Sweet 16 in the next four seasons.

Meanwhile, Pearl resurrected Tennessee’s program immediately. Those first three games are memorable to this day: Pearl raising Dane Bradshaw’s hand at the scorer’s table in 2006, Chris Lofton turning in the single best performance I’ve ever seen from a Tennessee player in 2007:

…and, of course, 1 vs 2 in 2008:

Calipari’s Tigers won by two the following year in Knoxville, then he walked through that door to Lexington, Kentucky. At both Memphis and Kentucky, Calipari has been a vocal champion of playing anyone, anytime, anywhere…except, apparently, the Vols while at Memphis.

Interestingly, Calipari built a national power those last four years at Memphis with guys like Robert Dozier (Georgia), Chris Douglas-Roberts (Detroit), Joey Dorsey (Baltimore), Shawn Taggart (Richmond), Derrick Rose (Chicago), and Tyreke Evans (Pennsylvania). While the Tigers did have high-value recruits like Willie Kemp from Bolivar on their roster, most of their success came from recruiting on the national stage.

Meanwhile, Tennessee rose to power under Bruce Pearl during the same span with Memphis-area products Dane Bradshaw, Wayne Chism, and J.P. Prince.

The Fadeaway

The Vols beat Memphis by 20 in Pearl’s final season, then lost three straight before the contract was up, including a memorable double overtime affair in Maui in Cuonzo Martin’s first season. In seven seasons Josh Pastner made the NCAA Tournament four times, but never got out of the first weekend. The Vols made the Sweet 16 from Dayton in Cuonzo Martin’s final season, their only appearance in the tournament’s second weekend between the Elite Eight to open the decade and last season.

In football, Lane Kiffin’s Vols doubled-up Memphis 56-28 in 2009, then Tyler Bray got his first career start and win at Memphis in 2010, the beginning of a four-game winning streak to get the Vols bowl eligible.

Tommy West got the Tigers bowl eligible five out of six years from 2003-08, including a 9-4 season in 2003, but flamed out at 2-10 in 2009.

The decade since the last football meeting between the two schools has seen a shocking reversal of fortune. Justin Fuente’s arrival on the banks of the Mississippi in 2012 saw the Tigers go 4-8 and 3-9 in his first two seasons, then rocket to a 10-3 finish in 2014 and a #25 final ranking. The Tigers went 9-4 the following season, Fuente went to Virginia Tech, and Mike Norvell picked up right where he left off: 8-5, 10-3 with a ranked finish, 8-6, and now 12-1 this season with the coveted New Year’s Six appearance in the Cotton Bowl.

Here’s a list of the other bowl games in the history of Memphis football: Burley, Pasadena (not Rose), New Orleans, GMAC, Motor City, New Orleans, St. Petersburg, Miami Beach, Birmingham, Boca Raton, Liberty, Birmingham.

While the Tigers rose, Tennessee wandered through the wilderness. Since 2014, Memphis is 57-22; the Vols are 41-34.

Meanwhile in basketball, Pastner’s move to Georgia Tech brought two tumultuous years of Tubby Smith and no NCAA or NIT appearances. Tennessee watched Cuonzo Martin leave for California, then hired Donnie Tyndall before firing him with cause after one season, then went 15-19 and 16-16 in Rick Barnes’ first two seasons.

The Return

And then Memphis hired Penny Hardaway, and what we hoped we were getting from Rick Barnes arrived in full.

The Vols went 26-9 and won the SEC in 2018, then 31-6 including a month at #1 last season. Memphis went 22-14 and made the NIT last season, then Hardaway signed the nation’s number one recruiting class, including two four-stars and a five-star from Memphis. Two of those players, including James Wiseman, played for Hardaway at Memphis East.

So when this series was renewed last season as a three-year deal – Memphis, Knoxville, and next year in Nashville for the first time – it was unique in a couple of ways. One, there’s no football in the contract. Memphis has a home-and-home with Mississippi State and a two-for-one with Arkansas in the coming decade, but no Vols on the horizon.

But two, when the series renewed last December, balled fists or no…both the Tennessee and Memphis programs were on better footing than in 1989 or, as far as we knew at the time, 2006.

Pearl and Calipari were both on their way to great things in that initial meeting now 14 years ago. But we couldn’t be sure of either at the time. This time, the Vols have been one of the best teams in college basketball over the last two seasons and show no signs of leaving the Top 25, and Memphis has the nation’s best recruiting class.

I don’t know what Penny’s ambitions are – stay at Memphis forever, get to the NBA, or somewhere between – but it’s clear he can recruit at the level it takes to get Memphis where it needs to go. And it’s clear Rick Barnes can do the same at Tennessee, currently holding the nation’s #4 recruiting class for 2020 with one mid-state Tennessean and two others from Florida and Virginia. Jaden Springer chose the Vols over the Tigers.

When Barnes was asked this week about the future of the series beyond next year’s game in Nashville, he said:

“I think it’s been good for everybody…I think it will be good next year for us in Nashville. As your schedule opportunities come up, you’ve got to look at it and evaluate it.”

“You’re trying to get me to talk about things,” Barnes said. “Really, I don’t think about that. I told you, we’re going to build a schedule based on where and what we think is best. That’s all I can answer.”

And that’s the rub: where and what we think is best.

When Calipari took the Memphis job, playing Tennessee wasn’t best for business. Not because of what Memphis was at the time, or what Tennessee was, but because of who he was trying to get Memphis to be. When the series did resume in 2006, playing Tennessee wasn’t best for business because the Vols had struggled under Buzz Peterson and Memphis was looking to level up.

This notion that Tennessee has more to gain from playing Memphis than the other way around has always been at the heart of the matter for me, especially as Tennessee’s national profile rose under Pearl. The Tigers have spent the last 25 years in Conference USA and the American. In no individual season did it ever hurt their strength of schedule to play the Vols; far more often than not, it helped. Memphis got where they were going under Calipari by recruiting nationally, the Vols in part under Pearl by recruiting well in-state. Once Calipari left, the question could’ve been easily asked in reverse.

But now, having spent most of this decade apart, both Tennessee and Memphis are on excellent footing relative to both their expectations and recent history. For maybe the first time, we don’t have to have this argument about who benefits more.

It would be quite an opportunity missed, then, if both schools decide not to run it back after next season.