Hey look, basketball content in late June! A point I would love to have made with Kerry Blackshear coming to Knoxville: in Ken Pomeroy’s player comparisons ($), Blackshear’s 2019 season was most similar to 2017 Johnathan Motley from Baylor…and 2014 Jarnell Stokes. Would you like to add a Jarnell Stokes […]
Author: Will Shelton
After Guarantano, Which Vol is Hardest to Replace?
You always start with the quarterback when doing the ominous summer piece on who you can least afford to lose. And Guarantano fits that bill, with unproven options behind him and untapped potential in front of him. It’s more fun to think of this conversation in terms of replacement value. […]
Grant Williams to the Boston Celtics!
In 1996, the Boston Celtics selected Tennessee’s Steve Hamer in the second round, 38th overall. The Celtics hadn’t made the playoffs the previous three seasons; the Vols hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament in seven years. Hamer averaged 2.2 points per game on the worst Celtics team in history in 1997, […]
We’ve Made This Climb Before: What the Early 80’s Can Teach 2019
Tennessee is 67-70 in the last 11 years, a longer sub-.500 run in the modern era than we can find for any of the other 15 winningest programs in college football history. A more concrete way to look at it: the Vols haven’t finished a season in the AP Top […]
Are we underrating or overrating the importance of Guarantano staying healthy?
There are plenty of scenarios we wouldn’t enjoy this fall – no playmakers emerge on the defensive line, freshmen don’t emerge to build hope for the future – but it’s probably fair to say nothing would impact Tennessee’s ceiling like losing Jarrett Guarantano for any length of time. Some of […]
The Long Way Out of the Wrong Kind of History
Despite everything that’s happened the last 11 years, Tennessee is still 11th in winning percentage all-time, still second in the SEC behind Alabama. This is Tennessee’s historical DNA in both football and basketball: the first challenger to the thrones in Tuscaloosa and Lexington. But Tennessee’s struggles from Phillip Fulmer’s final […]
Making Progress: Third-and-Short
If you’re looking for the thing Tennessee was absolutely, positively worst at last season, it’s third-and-short.
Making Progress: Explosive Plays
In 2016 the Vols were one of the most explosive teams in the country: 79 plays of 20+ yards, 19th nationally. In 2017, the bottom fell out hardest here: only 38 plays of 20+ yards, 123rd nationally. Here too, progress was slow but accounted for last season: 52 plays of […]
Early Bowl Projections Expect Vols to Make Reasonable Progress
Magazines are hitting shelves – get ours here! – and with them an early round of bowl projections for Tennessee. The good news: I haven’t seen the Vols projected to come up empty in the postseason yet, nor have I seen Tennessee projected to spend December in Birmingham or Shreveport. […]
Making Progress: Red Zone Defense
Here are Tennessee’s stops in the red zone last season: Alabama went for it on fourth down up 58-21 with four minutes left South Carolina took a knee in the red zone at the end of the game Kentucky had a field goal blocked with the Vols up 24-7 with […]