Category Archives: Basketball

Tennessee goes for its sixth ranked win of the year at #25 Texas A&M on Tuesday night. The Vols, in fact, are 5-1 against the Top 25 this year (and 4-1 against the Top 15), the lone loss at #9 Arizona. Tennessee got it done against #3 Kansas, #13 Maryland, #10 Texas, #25 Auburn, and #1 Alabama.

It’s frustrating, of course, to get such good results against the best of your schedule, but also have an additional six losses. It’s unusual to be so good against the Top 25 but be 0-2 against a Kentucky team outside it. The Vols are 4-2 in what Bart Torvik defines as Quad 1A games; the only team in the nation with a better winning percentage vs Quad 1A is Arizona at 5-0. And, of course, the Vols have four Quad 2 losses.

We’re 27 games in now, so in part we know what we’ll know about this team. But we’ve also seen injuries mess with Tennessee’s ability to run with a consistent best five for more than a few games at a time. Most recently, only the stretch from at LSU on January 21 to Josiah-Jordan James’ injury at Vanderbilt on February 8 featured the Vols at full availability.

With JJJ and Julian Phillips still day-to-day, we don’t know for sure when we’ll see that full strength again, or how strong it will be. That makes it harder to say this team can find its best basketball late purely through lineup solidification, though it has been done here before (2010, our only appearance in the Elite Eight).

Still, the frustration of losing – in particular, to Kentucky and at the buzzer – can outweigh what has been a really strong regular season run for this team by our own historical standards.

Ranked wins don’t mean everything, and mean less in college basketball, where tournament wins are king. But I’m still a proponent of celebrating every meaningful opportunity, and ranked wins provide the best metric for that in the moment. We just finished a football season where the Vols tied 1998 with wins over six ranked teams. That’s not where you start the conversation on the accomplishments of last fall, a journey that included and ended with the Vols in the national championship conversation and a belief they can be there again.

But it was the most fun you could have along the way.

So, in the “don’t forget to have fun” department, consider this: since the AP poll expanded to 25 teams in 1989, I count only three Tennessee Basketball teams to have ever beaten more ranked teams than this one. Shout out, as always, to the media guide:

• 2000: The eventual SEC Champions and first Vol squad to make the modern Sweet 16 beat six ranked opponents, all after January 1: #21 LSU, #9 Florida in double overtime, #7 Auburn by 29 points, #12 Florida in single overtime, #18 Kentucky, and #20 UConn a 4/5 Round 2 game.
• 2007: Chris Lofton turned an ankle, and this team lost six of eight from January 10 through February 3. Otherwise, they went 22-5 with ranked wins over #16 Memphis in Lofton’s barrage, #15 Oklahoma State on the Dane Bradshaw tip-in, #23 Vanderbilt, #20 Kentucky, #25 Alabama, and the defending champs from #5 Florida. They also beat an unranked Texas team in a game you might’ve heard of, and lost by one point to #1 Ohio State in the Sweet 16.
• 2022: That’s right: last season has the record with seven ranked wins. The Vols got #18 North Carolina, #6 Arizona, #13 LSU, #4 Kentucky, #3 Auburn, #14 Arkansas, then #5 Kentucky in the SEC Tournament.

So right now, put the last two years together and you’ve got a dozen ranked wins. To find a dozen ranked wins before that, you need five seasons (2017-2021). The two-year high in the Bruce Pearl era was 10 in 2007 and 2008.

So yes, March wins will always count most. But as it’s not March yet, we can’t solve that problem today. What the Vols can do is get healthy and make progress, whatever degree the one relates to the other. And, along the way, we might find more reasons to celebrate…starting tomorrow night.

Go Vols.

Just on the basketball side of things, just for a moment.

Tennessee has now beaten #3 Kansas, #10 Texas, and #1 Alabama. It’s February 15.

That’s good, because last year’s team beat #6 Arizona, #4 Kentucky, #3 Auburn, then #5 Kentucky again for good measure. In 2019, the Vols beat #1 Gonzaga and #4 Kentucky twice. Throw in the 2020 win at Rupp Arena over #6 Kentucky, and that’s 11 wins over Top 10 teams in the last five years.

We are good at basketball.

It’s the kind of good where, even without two starters against the number one team in the nation, you get it done. And not because you were lucky: Tennessee shot 26.1% from the arc against Alabama and missed nine free throws. The Tide shot 37.5% from three and 16-of-20 at the line.

But Tennessee won because they were Tennessee: relentless defense, taking the ball away 19 times. And in a game when every rebound was fiercely contested, the Vols grabbed 13 on the offensive end. Alabama was number one for a reason; getting it back on 32.5% of misses was huge. Put those two things together, and the Vols had 15 more shot attempts than the Tide.

And Tennessee was consistent. Alabama made a number of big shots to keep things within reach throughout the second half. But after a Zakai Zeigler free throw made it 44-40 Vols with 12:37 to play, Alabama never got within one possession. When the Tide closed again to four points with 3:30 to play, it was an offensive rebound – one of four from Jonas Aidoo – that pushed Tennessee back in command. When Santiago Vescovi missed the front end with 1:19 to play, a sequence that led to Alabama with the ball down six just 30 seconds later, he created a turnover – one of three steals on the night – then hit two free throws to effectively, appropriately, end it.

Five Vols scored between 9 and 15 points. Jahmai Mashack didn’t score, but Rob Lewis at Volquest notes he led the team in +/- thanks to his exceptional defense. Tennessee didn’t shoot it great against a great Bama defense, but they played with purpose on that end of the floor, and cleaned up enough of their misses to do what needed to be done. Defense, championships, etc.

We’ll see what championships are out there for this team to win, but tonight affirmed what’s probably always been true, only blurred by buzzer beaters: we’re good. Good enough to beat anybody. Great enough defensively to make it really hard to beat us.

That’s a few words of the many, many this team, its coaching staff, and tonight’s effort deserve, on their own.

As a…what do we call it? A bonus? A gift? A not-sure-we’ll-see-this-again-so-let’s-celebrate-it-madly?

Tennessee beat #3 Alabama in football four months ago, then beat #1 Alabama in basketball tonight.

Whatever your question, not just in football but in apparently the entire athletic department, you can believe the answer can be yes.

Tennessee is good. And, especially tonight, at our best when we’re ourselves.

Go Vols.

What’s the best way to follow back-to-back heartbreak? Here comes the biggest opportunity of the season.

Tennessee and Alabama have played some good ones, with four of the last five meetings being decided by five points or less. Since Nate Oats arrived, Alabama has won three of four: the Vols rallied from 15 down behind 22 from John Fulkerson to win in Tuscaloosa in 2020. Then Bama scored the first win over Tennessee in 2021, knocking down 10 threes in an eight-point win in Knoxville. Jaden Springer got hurt after playing just five minutes.

That’s a common theme: Tennessee has been short-handed from the tip in the last two meetings, and may make it three Wednesday night. In the 2021 SEC Tournament, 24 hours after Fulkerson’s concussion, the Vols fought but fell against the SEC champs 73-68. And last year in Tuscaloosa, both Fulkerson and Kennedy Chandler were out, but the Vols again were game in another 73-68 defeat. We’ll see about the availability of Josiah-Jordan James and Julian Phillips this time around.

The Vols and Tide boast two of the best defenses in the nation. Tennessee is still number one in that department, with Alabama five (and Mississippi State up to four). But they go about it in different ways. The Tide are driven by taking away good shots: Alabama is second in the nation in three-point percentage allowed (26.3%), first in two-point percentage allowed. But they do all of that without committing to the creation of turnovers: Alabama is 311th nationally in turnover percentage.

Tennessee, of course, is first in the nation in effective field goal percentage allowed, and still first in three-point percentage allowed (24.2%) after last week’s barrage. But the Vols get a lot of their work done defensively in creating turnovers: 17th nationally in turnover percentage, with Zakai Zeigler and Santiago Vescovi both excellent in creating steals.

A quick word on luck: Alabama is 32nd in that stat at KenPom, and 4-0 in games decided by one or two possessions. The Vols are 3-3 in such contests now, but carry a luck rating of 293rd. That would be the “worst” luck rating of any tournament team here, other than the poster children from 2014, who went 0-6 in one or two possession games but almost made the Elite Eight. So yeah, it felt like this:

https://twitter.com/BetSmartUS/status/1625139779649081346

Back to turnovers: last year, what made for Tennessee’s worst basketball was easily identifiable here. The Vols had a season-high 20 turnovers in the nightmare at Rupp Arena, 18 in the loss to Villanova, 18 more in an overtime escape vs Ole Miss. When the Vols turned it over 14+ times, they were 7-4, and 20-4 otherwise. Like everything else in this sport, it wasn’t bulletproof – the Vols had a season-low six turnovers against Michigan – but it was pretty clear to see what made things get away from us.

But this year, two of Tennessee’s best performances (and two of our four Quad 1 wins) came when the Vols leaned in to the chaos offensively.

Against #3 Kansas in the Bahamas, Tennessee shot 12-of-27 from three and 80% from the free throw line. The three-guard combo of Zeigler, Vescovi, and Tyreke Key had 44 points, and Tennessee won easily 64-50. We also turned it over 24 times, by far a season high.

In Starkville, without Vescovi or Key, Zakai Zeigler played 40 minutes and finished with 24 points. The Vols also got an 18/11 from Julian Phillips, and pulled away late for a 70-59 win. Similar song and dance: 10-of-24 from three, 14-of-15 at the line…and 17 turnovers.

Is there something to be said here for simply being more aggressive offensively? And how might that manifest itself against an Alabama team that really isn’t interested in trying to take the ball from you?

What the Tide are interested in is going fast when they have possession: Bama plays at the second-fastest pace in the nation overall, and gets their shots off third-fastest. This, as we know, is not Tennessee’s primary love language. But if defense continues to be the constant for the Vols – and they’ll get a big test tonight – I’m curious to see if the offense can find an additional spark by creating from chaos.

It’s been a weird set of days, but here we are: a favorite over the number one team in the nation. We’ve seen enough, both in the past and the present with this team, to believe something good is available tonight.

Beat Bama.

It was a “check the media guide” night, and sadly not in the fun way. Apparently I’d blocked from memory that Vanderbilt hit 18 threes against us in 2005, the Thompson-Boling Arena record. In Rick Barnes’ tenure, at least, the only teams to hit more than the 14 Missouri fired through tonight were Auburn, Colgate, and Purdue in 2019…who all did it in a span of 11 days against maybe our best team ever.

This sport can be weird.

In that department, I’m pretty sure I haven’t blocked from memory the Vols being on the wrong end of back-to-back buzzer beaters. That’s new. As such, it will be a new experience for this team to move forward from.

For what it’s worth, I thought all of this was good:

Rick Barnes: Honestly, I'm really proud of the fight those guys put up in the second half. The way we fought back, I love it. It's a different feeling than the one the other night.

— Ben McKee (@benmckee14) February 12, 2023

Rick Barnes: I hate it for Santi. He's hurting. I'm hurting for him. I really am. He's won a lot of games for us.

— Ben McKee (@benmckee14) February 12, 2023

Rick Barnes: I think we can grow from these last two games. We're all disappointed that we lost, but there's still a lot of basketball left. We'll grow from it.

— Ben McKee (@benmckee14) February 12, 2023

#Vols guard Tyreke Key: I couldn't be more proud of our guys. We fought to come back and we did. They just hit a tough shot there at the end. You just have to give them credit. Not much you can do about that type of shot.

— Ben McKee (@benmckee14) February 12, 2023

The good news here: all the big picture questions we might have or the feeling sorry for ourselves vibes have no choice but to go through #3 Alabama next.

They’ll go to Rupp Arena after that, but we’re healthiest at one-at-a-time, and no matter what this next one is our biggest one.

Health will continue to be a question mark, now both for Josiah-Jordan James and Julian Phillips, who was off to a nice start in ten minutes tonight. In response, Tyreke Key played 31 minutes, his most since 34 at Arizona. And he was on fire in the second half, finishing with 23 points on 13 shots. The Vols did their part offensively, with 12 threes and 26 free throws. The heartbreak is the only option for the lead story tonight, no doubt. But Tennessee almost beat what was an eight seed in the Bracket Matrix when they shot 14-of-26 (53.8%) from three, while playing without two starters. It’s a situation you live with more easily if it ended in different fashion.

But again: it’s all forward, and against what will feel like our biggest test. It’s a great opportunity to reframe the narrative of what this season still is, and still can be.

I’m really eager to see what’s next.

Go Vols.

If defense is the constant, predicting what we need on the offensive end is still a moving target. So, sure: make shots. The Vols are 227th nationally in effective field goal percentage, the lowest ranking of any of the Rick Barnes tournament teams in Knoxville. In SEC play, the shooting numbers probably aren’t quite as bad as you think: fifth in the league in effective field goal percentage, fifth in three-point percentage (at just 31.8%, so either the league is just really bad at it this year, or the grind is claiming everyone right now). Last year the Vols shot 36.8% from three in league play, a tenth of a point behind Kentucky at the top.

Shots going in would be great. The offense, as it’s always done under Barnes, seeks to create good shots through good ball movement, where Tennessee still leads the SEC in assist rate.

But when shots aren’t falling, where to turn? After the loss to Kentucky, we looked to offensive rebounding, noting the Vols were 14-0 when getting more than 25% of their misses. But in Gainesville, the Vols grabbed 36.7% of their misses and lost.

After the Vols beat Auburn shooting 9.5% from the arc, we noted that Tennessee was 14-0 when shooting 30+% from three, and 23-1 at that number last season. But in Nashville, the Vols shot 36.8% from deep and lost.

It’s still true that the defense is so good, getting just minimal results from three and hitting the offensive glass usually give the Vols every chance they need. But the Vanderbilt loss highlighted something that has quickly become a glaring note: the Vols are getting to the free throw line far less than the rest of the SEC.

On the year, the Vols are 210th nationally in free throw rate. The season-long ranking is not that different from what we’ve seen last season, or even in 2019, but both of those teams rated much higher in the shot-making department.

But in 11 league games this year, the Vols are getting to the free throw line on a league-worst 20.7% of their field goal attempts. The next-worst squad is South Carolina, a woeful 241st in KenPom and 231st in offense, who gets to the line at 26.8% in SEC play. Last year Missouri was worst in the league in free throw rate at 27.5%. The Vols improved in league play in 2022 to ultimately finish fifth at 36.6%.

How do you coach your team to get to the foul line more often? Attacking the basket unsuccessfully could lead to runouts the other way that negate Tennessee’s absolute strength on the defensive end, it’s true. Playing more through the bigs could lead to more free throws: Uros Plavsic gets free throws on 39.3% of his attempts (but is shooting 36.4% from the stripe), Tobe Awaka at 35.2%. Tyreke Key’s number is higher than I thought as well.

But by far, Julian Phillips leads the Vols (and is 49th nationally) in getting free throws on 59.3% of his attempts.

This might be more of an side note than a dot to connect at this point, but when Phillips attempts at least four free throws in a game, the Vols are 11-1 (with the loss to Colorado). In the other losses: two attempts at Arizona, none vs Kentucky, three at Florida, and the only two free throws of the game before the miss at the end at Vanderbilt.

You can also use that stat to see how the offense has changed, in part due to the availability of Josiah-Jordan James. Phillips attempted 65 free throws in Tennessee’s first 10 games. Since then, he’s attempted just 31 free throws. This is of particular note, of course, because James is down with a sprained ankle for the moment.

To me, the conversation about Phillips and his role in this offense is less about not dunking it in those final seconds at Vanderbilt, and more about what he could do for this offense in getting to the line, and how he does it better on paper than anyone else on this team.

It’s February 10, and the Vols are getting ready to face the most difficult portion of their schedule, we assume without Josiah-Jordan James for at least a minute. Keep playing defense, keep hitting the offensive glass, and sure, make shots. But the greatest room for improvement in this offense is in getting to the free throw line.

Start going back through Tennessee’s best shooting games under Rick Barnes, and you discover very quickly how much we enjoy playing Arkansas:

UT’s Best Three-Point Shooting Games (10+ Makes, 2018-23)

1. 2022 Arkansas: 12-of-18 (66.7%)
2. 2018 Arkansas: 11-of-17 (64.7%)
3. 2019 Arkansas: 11-of-18 (61.1%)
4. 2022 Longwood: 14-of-24 (58.3%)
5. 2023 Mississippi State: 12-of-21 (57.1%)

Stay tuned for Senior Day against the Hogs, but in the meantime, note that Tennessee’s January 3 win over Mississippi State is one of the five best performances we’ve seen from a Rick Barnes team.

And, just a few weeks later:

UT’s Worst Three-Point Shooting Games (10+ Attempts, 2018-23)

1. 2023 Auburn: 2-of-21 (9.5%)
2. 2022 Michigan: 2-of-18 (11.1%)
3. 2020 Alabama: 2-of-18 (11.1%)
4. 2023 Kentucky: 3-of-21 (14.3%)
5. 2021 Florida: 3-of-21 (14.3%)

You’ll recall, even if you’d like not to, that the Vols hit their highest mark up there on March 5 last year, then made the list again in the Longwood game on March 17…then topped the worst list 48 hours later.

Until now, as the Vols went 2-of-21 on Saturday against Auburn.

And we won!

That, as always, is the biggest takeaway.

We assume this team can win if their shots are falling. But the truth is, this group and last year’s team are both better at that than any of their Barnes predecessors:

UT’s Record When Shooting 30+% From Three

• 2023: 14-0
• 2022: 23-1 (Rupp Arena)
• 2021: 13-4
• 2020: 8-6
• 2019: 24-4
• 2018: 21-6

In the “it doesn’t take much” department, Tennessee’s defense is so good, the Vols handle business with relative ease when they just get 30+% from the arc. Of those 14 wins, only two involved any degree of danger: Maryland (7-of-21, 33.3%) and Starkville (10-of-24, 41.7%).

But Auburn’s no slouch, and this team is also proving they can win even when the three ball is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. So far this year, Tennessee has six games shooting 40+% from three, and six games shooting less than 25% from three. I wouldn’t call this team streaky, but we are hanging out at the endpoints the same amount of time. Still, the Vols are 4-2 when shooting less than 25% from three. Last year’s team at that number was 2-6. Only the 2019 Vols (5-0!) did better when threes simply weren’t going down, because they were so good at getting twos.

So yeah, you want this group to shoot 30+% from three. But when they don’t, I think offensive rebounding remains the best available metric to predict their success. The most meaningful takeaway from last week was probably Florida more than Auburn in that sense: Vols shoot 20% from three, opponent shoots 35% from three, Tennessee grabs 14 offensive rebounds but still loses in part from great individual post play on the other side. No one is bulletproof this year.

But when you look at the whole picture going back through Barnes’ tournament teams, the Auburn win is more about this team’s chances when absolutely nothing is going in, which are better than they’ve ever been. We don’t need much from three for this team to succeed. But even when we don’t get it, the Vols can still be there in the end.

Even with the loss at Florida, the Vols are projected to finish the regular season at 25-6 (14-4) in both Torvik and KenPom. In recent history, that number would be topped only by 2000 (24-5), 2008 (28-3), and 2019 (27-4).

Of course, that probably doesn’t make Wednesday’s loss feel much better; I continue to think about these conversations in football when people say a 12-team playoff will make the regular season less meaningful. Just as Saturday’s win over Texas truly satisfied, the loss at Florida truly stings. It was the first of Tennessee’s four losses this year that couldn’t be explained by teams keeping the Vols off the offensive glass: Colorado, Arizona, and especially Kentucky (9%) held the Vols to less than 23% in offensive rebounding percentage. At Florida, the Vols grabbed 31.8% of their misses, but still couldn’t overcome on the offensive end.

Florida also shot a season-high 35% from the arc against Tennessee. The only other team to shoot 33+% against us was USC, who took the Vols to overtime in the Bahamas. Of note, last season 14 teams shot 33+% against the Vols from the arc; the Vols went 9-5 in those games, including wins over North Carolina, Arkansas, and Arizona.

I think some of the worry of any loss this season will get tied directly back to Michigan by default, which we can’t do anything about until March comes around again. Last year the Wolverines shot 37.5% (6-of-16) from the arc against Tennessee, combined with strong individual post play and an ice-cold performance from the Vols. Because it beat a UT team playing its very best basketball at the time last year, there’s always a concern it could do the same to this UT team playing the very best in KenPom in program history.

So here’s the least-fun but always-necessary version of this post that shows up every year: even the best Tennessee teams lose games, and usually ones you think they shouldn’t.

Every one of Bruce Pearl’s teams lost at least one game to a team finishing outside the Top 50 in KenPom. The 2008 squad went to Rupp Arena at 16-1 and lost to a Kentucky team that finished 78th. The 2010 Elite Eight squad lost at #91 Georgia.

Rick Barnes’ two best teams have, in part, been victims of their own success in a different kind of way. The 2019 squad started 23-1, but faced a back-loaded SEC schedule. They lost five times in their final 13 games, but all were to Top 20 KenPom foes. And last year’s team didn’t lose to anyone outside the Top 30, but also didn’t lose to anyone other than #18 Arkansas after January, until the Michigan game…which made it sting so much more, of course. But along the way, both of those teams had very un-fun days in Rupp Arena, losing by a combined 45 points.

This team’s “worst” loss is likely to remain #64 Colorado, but that was the second game of the season. Florida is currently 38th in KenPom; we’ll see where the Gators finish. But there’s the combination of “best ever” in advanced metrics, and losses, other than Arizona, where the offense suffers…plus a fairly back-loaded schedule in its own right. So it creates a conversation where there are more reasons to believe in this team than ever in some ways…and a question that waits to emerge if shots aren’t falling early in the contest. What will this team do when it’s cold? And how hot does the opposition need to be to overcome it? We know the Vols can struggle if they can’t create second chances. But they, like every other team in the nation this year, aren’t bulletproof, even with a defense this good.

From a purely college basketball standpoint, it should make for an enjoyably unpredictable finish. From Tennessee’s perspective, the Vols get a test from Auburn tomorrow afternoon, then go to Vanderbilt and get Missouri the following week. And then it ramps up: Alabama, at Kentucky, at Texas A&M, South Carolina, Arkansas, at Auburn. With apologies to the Gamecocks, the rest of that stretch are all Top 40ish KenPom foes.

We’re only at the halfway point in SEC play; plenty of basketball remains, plenty of room for improvement, as we just witnessed last year. This group still has a chance to be in the conversation for the best we’ve ever seen around here. But best will not be bulletproof, even when their defense makes it feel like that sometimes.

As they hit the same speedbumps that even those best Tennessee teams have struggled with, how will the Vols continue to grow?

Brackets are coming fast and furious now. And on February 1, at least for the moment, we have consensus between the AP poll, the Bracket Matrix, and Bart Torvik’s predictive bracketology.

Team	AP	Matrix	TRank	KenPom
Purdue	1	1	1	5
Tennessee	2	4	3	1
Houston	3	3	2	2
Alabama	4	2	4	4

Only UCLA, at number three in KenPom, prevents a Top 4 consensus in polls, brackets, and advanced stats. But overall, these four teams represent the top tier of college basketball, in an order of your choosing.

Recent history will continue to show that number one seeds average 4.5 losses on Selection Sunday, two seeds 6.25 losses. Much of the bracket conversation this year will be figuring out what to do with the Big 12, with six teams on the top four lines in yesterday’s Bracket Matrix. That group will continue to cannibalize itself, making it more difficult for any one of them to rise to a number one seed.

Meanwhile, Houston stands alone in the American: the next-best team in KenPom is Memphis, 35 spots behind. It’s a somewhat similar story in the Big Ten, where the second best team is, you guessed it, Rutgers. They’re 17th in KenPom, a dozen spots back of Purdue. And in the SEC, you have to drop 16 spots after the Vols and Tide to get to Arkansas, another 10 to find Auburn after that.

So in simple raw losses, these four teams appear to have a clear advantage. Keep an eye on Virginia too; I’m not used to thinking of the ACC as being bad in basketball, but that league is sixth in KenPom’s conference ratings, and the Hoos (13th) are 16 spots ahead of Duke.

As the plot thickens in the race to the top, here are the Top 16 (+1) teams in contention. The Bracket Matrix and Torvik’s TRank agree on 15 of these teams, with Gonzaga and (especially) UConn being the outliers. We’ll get a closer view when the NCAA releases its own Top 16; that usually comes mid-February. We also learned last year not to put too much stock in that for one’s ultimate fate on Selection Sunday.

But this year, the Vols can make much more of their own fate. Here’s how they currently compare to the rest of the chase in projected losses (via KenPom) on February 1:

Team	Current Ls	Proj. Ls	Matrix	Torvik TRank
Purdue	1	4	1	1
Houston	2	3	1	1
Tennessee	3	5	1	1
Alabama	3	5	1	1
Arizona	3	5	2	2
Kansas	4	8	2	2
Texas	4	8	2	2
UCLA	4	6	2	3
Baylor	6	10	3	3
Virginia	3	5	3	4
Kansas State	4	8	3	4
Iowa State	6	10	3	4
Marquette	5	7	4	3
TCU	5	9	4	3
Xavier	5	8	4	4
Gonzaga	4	6	4	5
UConn	6	8	5	2

The Vols continue to play at an all-time pace in Knoxville, by any metric you want. In raw wins, 17-3 through the first 20 games trails only 2000 (18-2), 2008 (18-2), and 2019 (19-1). In the polls, the 2000 Vols topped out at #5, while both 2008 and 2019 went to #1. This group sits at #4, with #10 Texas headed to town tomorrow.

In the Bracket Matrix, the Vols are the first two seed. In Bart Torvik’s predictive bracketology, the Vols are the last number one seed with Texas the first two, adding to the Elite Eight atmosphere surrounding tomorrow’s game.

It’s KenPom where the case for the current Vols is strongest: a 29.53 rating continues to represent what would be a program high, as well as an SEC high in the last eight years. As was the case against Kentucky, the Vols will go to a big Saturday home game with a chance to move to number one in KenPom, less than a point behind Houston at the moment.

The loss to Kentucky – and probably the fact that this team’s best win came away from our presence in Knoxville vs Kansas – makes it tempting for some of us to question whether this team is really the best we’ve seen at UT. That’s been a really fun conversation this week from Wes Rucker and Will Warren.

I think there are two parts of this conversation worth mentioning again. First, KenPom places a value on every possession, much like SP+ does with every snap. When Bill Connelly went back through the archives and rated the best teams of each decade by percentile, it was Heath Shuler’s 1993 Vols who rated highest at UT in the 90s in SP+. No one would pick 1993 as the best season. But play-for-play, that team was a machine: they lost 41-34 in The Swamp, tied the defending champs from Alabama in Birmingham, and destroyed everyone else in the regular season. They beat #22 Georgia by 32 and #13 Louisville by 35. That’s how you rate so highly. In metrics that value possessions and snaps over the final outcome – and don’t put any special value on the fourth quarter or the last two minutes – you get a good picture of how a team performs play-for-play. And possession-for-possession, the 2023 Vols are as good as anything we’ve seen here in basketball.

But the other part of this is, of course, that the season isn’t over. So when we’re comparing the present to the past, we’re comparing an incomplete picture to a finished work.

The two most popular answers for what has been better – 2008 and 2019 – have arguments that lead with their number one ranking. To me, they also both have stories that end with results that, even though we hated them, make sense. The 2008 Vols ran into a bad match-up buzzsaw with three-seed Louisville in the Sweet 16, and lost by 19. The 2019 Vols ran into Ryan Cline shooting 7-of-10 from the arc and some frustrating officiating in the final minute; replay that game all you want, and I’m still not exactly sure what we’d like the Vols to do much differently in it. But the simplicity of those answers made them easier to accept, at least over time.

One key difference in each of those years as well though: 2008 and 2019 were all-time college basketball years. In 2008, all four number one seeds made the Final Four. In 2019, you had elite versions of Gonzaga, Duke with Zion, and a Virginia team that is one of the best college basketball teams of the last 10 years. In KenPom, three teams finished at 30+ in 2008, five in 2019.

Right now, Houston is the only team at 30+, with the Vols right behind them at 29.59. For the moment, that’s it.

We need the full season to know what we think about the 2023 Vols. Sometimes, at this point, things look one way and end up another. The 2001 Vols started 16-1 but finished in the 8/9 game. And the 2022 Vols were 14-6 (5-3) at this point, fresh off a last-second loss to Texas. They won 13 of their next 14, including the SEC Tournament, jumping from 14th to 7th in KenPom.

Some of the most fun you can have with this conversation right now is to mad scientist it. Because when we’re talking about what we think is better than right now, in part I think we’re talking about it like this:

2018 Defense + 2019 Offense

This one we can quantify: in KenPom, if you put the 2018 defense (sixth nationally) and the 2019 offense (third nationally) together, you’d have a rating of approximately 30.3, which would be the best in program history. It’s not far from where the 2023 Vols are right now. But in at least that metric, it would be the leader in the clubhouse.

It’s how we sometimes think of that group, because the faces are all mostly the same. One exception: James Daniel, who had the highest steal rate on the 2018 group. As we speculated throughout the 2019 season, perhaps there was simply the human nature element of focus with that group: when you’re number one for a month running through a back-loaded SEC schedule, it’s understandably easier to loosen up a bit on defense. We also saw that group turn it way back up when facing Kentucky in Knoxville. But if you take the very best of that two-year run, it would represent the program’s very best basketball…for now.

March 2010 & March 2014

The Tennessee team that went the farthest was 20-7 (8-5) on February 23. But they finally got all their rotation back when Brian Williams returned to the lineup. And from that point, they went 8-2. They beat the Wall/Cousins NBA D-League team in Knoxville. They smashed an NIT 1-seed in Starkville. And they made it to the Elite Eight by going through the Evan Turner Ohio State squad, finishing a point away from the Final Four. That season was a roller coaster, and it led to plenty of lineup changes. But that core group at the end – Bobby Maze, Scotty Hopson, J.P. Prince, Wayne Chism, and Brian Williams – was a really good college basketball team.

In the figured-it-out department, no Tennessee team got there later than Cuonzo Martin’s last squad. On February 22 they were 16-11 (7-7). They also finished 8-2, jumping from 26th to 7th in KenPom. Six of those wins came by 15+ points, with what was another really good college basketball team: Antonio Barton, Jordan McRae, Josh Richardson, Jeronne Maymon, and Jarnell Stokes. Possession for possession, you wouldn’t consider either of those teams as the best in Tennessee history. But at the end of the year, they were absolutely playing their best basketball, and became the two teams that came closest to the Final Four.

2007 Chris Lofton in 2008

Not sure how to quantify it, and there’s obviously nothing to do with it other than celebrate Lofton’s recovery from cancer. But when we think about those teams, we never really got to see this hypothetical peak…and the actual peaks, including the win at Memphis in the 1 vs 2 game, were so high, we never really needed to ask for more. But if you’re talking about how those teams might be best suited to beat the current squad, it’s this version of it in our heads – Lofton at full strength with the added presence of Tyler Smith – that we’re sometimes assuming.

Alllllllll of that to say…if the current Vols are simply in the conversation of being as good or better than these teams, real or hypothetical?

This season has every opportunity to be special.

And that continues tomorrow, in a huge one with Texas.

Go Vols.

The Vols are back in that “one game away from #1 in KenPom” range, with Houston’s loss to Temple shaking up college basketball’s pecking order. In the hunt for the four number one seeds, we can continue to simplify the conversation this way:

• One Loss: Purdue
• Two Losses: Alabama, Houston, Kansas State
• Three Losses: Arizona, Auburn, Kansas, Tennessee, Texas, UCLA, Virginia

In the last five non-covid-affected NCAA Tournaments, one seeds averaged 4.5 losses on Selection Sunday, two seeds 6.25 losses. A season with far fewer blue-bloods at the top may play with those averages long before we get to March; the Big 12 will certainly continue to cannibalize. The SEC puts three teams on the above list. But in KenPom, brackets, polls, you name it…there’s a clear separation with the top two.

While the Vols are pursuing the top spot in KenPom and a program record, consider where they – and the Crimson Tide – currently fall on the list of the best SEC teams in KenPom since the 2015 Kentucky juggernaut:

Top SEC KenPom Teams, 2016-2023

Team	Year	KenPom	Finish
Tennessee	2023	28.96
Alabama	2023	28.00
Kentucky	2017	27.72	E8
Kentucky	2019	27.57	E8
Florida	2017	27.50	E8
Tennessee	2019	26.24	S16
Kentucky	2022	25.72	R1
Kentucky	2016	25.14	R2
Tennessee	2022	25.10	R2
Alabama	2021	25.09	S16
Auburn	2019	25.00	F4

So yeah, the Vols are good.

So is Bama, but we can’t solve that one until February 15. The Vols get Georgia on Wednesday night, then Texas in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. That’s a bit of a miss this year: the Vols have already beaten Kansas, and we’ll see how they fare in Rupp. But other than UT and the false UT, the leagues’ best teams don’t run right into each other: Alabama gets Oklahoma, Auburn gets West Virginia, Iowa State gets Missouri, Kansas State gets Florida.

Within the SEC, KenPom projects Alabama to finish 16-2, then Tennessee at 15-3, then three full games of separation to Auburn at 12-6. It may indeed become a two-team race. But the Vols also find themselves in the hunt with a dozen or so teams to get the program’s first one seed. We may come to the end of this thing not feeling real confident in any one team as the top overall seed. For Tennessee, the geography is valuable: a Louisville region is a much better prize than Kansas City, Las Vegas, or New York. That will, of course, put the Vols in direct competition with Alabama (and Purdue) to land there.

There’s plenty of basketball left here. But the Vols aren’t just playing well to the eyeballs, or in the context of this season that carries no Duke or Carolina at the top. Tennessee is, right now, playing at a more efficient level than any SEC team since 2015 Kentucky. And Alabama is right behind them.

Lots of fun out there in these next few weeks.

Go Vols.