Category Archives: Basketball

One year ago today, Tennessee beat #18 Purdue in the Battle 4 Atlantis. It was, at the time, an important win to get Tennessee a shot at Villanova and bolster their RPI for what we thought would be a run at the bubble.

One year later, #5 Tennessee will face #2 Kansas on Friday night.

There’s more, of course: #3 Gonzaga’s win over #1 Duke could propel the Bulldogs to the top of the polls, and they’ll face the Vols on December 9. They’ve got work to do between now and then, dates with Creighton and Washington. The Vols shouldn’t be threatened by Eastern Kentucky and Texas A&M Corpus Christi. There’s a chance Gonzaga and Tennessee could meet as #1 and #2.

All that’s down the road. The opportunity with Kansas is enough for one day.

The difference in Tennessee then and now was particularly striking against Louisville. The Vols, once the hunters, watched Louisville play that role against them really well for most of the game. Jeff Greer’s game story from The Athletic speaks of the Cardinals in language that fit Tennessee for years, and speaks of the Vols in terms we haven’t heard since Bruce Pearl’s days. Louisville was within one with less than nine minutes to play.

And then the Vols unleashed the kind of run a Top 5 team makes. A 14-0 run over the span of four minutes included only one point from Grant Williams, who finished with 24 total. Admiral Schofield did plenty of damage in that span though, finishing with 20 points. The Vols survived 11 Louisville threes, missed nine free throws, and still won by 11 while scoring 92 points. Through increasing degrees of difficulty, the Vols have ultimately handled Louisiana, Georgia Tech, and Louisville. Now it’s the boss level.

The Jayhawks beat Duke in the Elite Eight last year before falling to Villanova in the Final Four. Seven-footer Udoka Azubuike is back, currently 10th in the KenPom Player of the Year standings. Dedric Lawson, a 6’9″ Memphis transfer, is fourth.

Grant Williams is first.

The first question for any Vol opponent – “Does this team have anyone who can guard Grant Williams?” – should be an affirmative this time. Louisville had no answers, but I’d expect more from the Jayhawks. Azubuike sends back 12.8% of the shots he faces, and Lawson will bang in there as well. He was a volume scorer at Memphis, finishing in the top six among AAC players in his percentage of total team shots taken in both 2016 and 2017. That shouldn’t be as necessary at Kansas, but he’s averaging 16.3 points and 9.8 rebounds in the early going. Lagerald Vick leads the team in scoring with 20.8 points in 35.3 minutes, and is a scorching 18-of-29 from the arc so far this year.

Kansas has been giving up a really high percentage from the arc and winning anyway. Michigan State hit 12-of-23 (53.3%), and Marquette was 14-of-31 (45.2%). Neither was enough against the Jayhawks: the Spartans were undone by 18 turnovers, Marquette by only attempting five free throws. And on the other end, Kansas has shot well too: 10-of-23 (43.5%) against Michigan State, 5-of-10 (50%) last night, plus 12-of-19 (63.2%) against Vermont. And they don’t turn it over, with just 48 in four games despite playing a Top 50 pace.

The Jayhawks also take away almost any opportunity for an offensive rebound. In four games they’ve only surrendered 27 total offensive boards; that’s the eighth best percentage in the country. The Vols will need to be good on their first shot.

The good news: the Vols are once again one of the best teams in the nation in creating good shots via assist percentage. It’s currently at 70.1%, fourth in the nation, leading to the Vols shooting 51.7% from the floor, 18th nationally in the early going. In better news, the Vols are shooting 57.6% from two, 52nd nationally. Last year: 47.3%, 293rd nationally. It’s early. But shooting better from inside the arc was the most obvious place the Vols could improve from last year, and so far, so good.

They’ll need to be good against Kansas. Tennessee has lived on offensive rebounds in the past, but that may be a luxury they can’t afford against the Jayhawks. This could be an excellent test of how much Tennessee’s best basketball is worth; they should need every bit of it to win, but the prize for winning could be a shot at number one.

It’s the late shift: 9:00 PM ET, ESPN2. Go Vols.

As the Vols get set to take on Louisville today in Brooklyn, NY in the NIT Season Tip-Off, in front of them is an opportunity that has rarely been seen by the Tennessee Basketball program.  Yes, the Vols have had a few opportunities to make deep NCAA Tournament runs that were thwarted by things like a missed Scotty Hopson free throw or Jerry Green’s utter lack of ability to coach or even Sister Jean of Loyola.  But these Vols, coming off last season’s magical SEC Championship and 26-7 record, entered the 2018-19 season with the program’s highest ever pre-season ranking at #5.  And they have a coach in Rick Barnes, and stars like Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield, who attract the kind of positive media attention a marketing department can only dream of.  The momentum this program, which annually ranks in the Top 10 in national attendance – a testament to how much fan support is there, thin or especially thick – is palpable.

So it’s hard for fans to not look ahead a little bit, further even than what could be a Friday night primetime Top 5 matchup between the Vols and #1 Kansas should both the teams take care of business today.  To daily discussions about Tennessee Basketball on ESPN and on talk radio and Twitter by national pundits across the country.  To another Top 5 matchup with Gonzaga in December and then the SEC gauntlet featuring Top 25-ranked teams like Auburn, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and LSU.

See, as of last Tuesday Tennessee has now, in back to back classes, signed its first 4-star (2018 DJ Burns) and 5-star (2019 Josiah James) in the Barnes Era.  And while this year’s team is a veteran-laden squad with players who’ve played a lot of basketball, it amazingly has only two seniors (with Junior Grant Williams likely to at least test the NBA waters), so there will still be a ton of talent and experience next year and beyond as well.  Further, Tennessee has positioned itself incredibly well for 2020 5-star talents Keon Johnson – a Midstate product – and Jaden Springer, who plays for former Vol Bobby Maze’s AAU program that also has future stars in 2021 and beyond.

There is no reason other than history that Tennessee Basketball can’t elbow its way into a new tier along with your standard college basketball elites.  Tennessee will never have the historical record that programs like UNC or Kentucky or Kansas have.  But there is history there, from Ernie and Bernie to Tony White and many players and coaches in between, before and after.  And with a filled-up 20,000 seat arena and facilities as good as or better than any in the country, what Barnes is building now has a foundation that someone outside of Knoxville or not an in-the-know pundit might expect.  So when the Vols take the court today against Louisville, and, hopefully Friday against Kansas, they aren’t just playing for NCAA Tournament seeding come March.  They’re playing to take another step towards taking this program to a level it’s never seen, a level that for no good reason has not yet been reached.  And with Barnes at the helm and guys like Grant and Admiral on the floor, and with guys like Burns and James on the way and prospects like Johnson and Springer teed up, it’s all there for the taking.  These Vols just have to take it.

The one good thing about your rival being at the peak of their powers is the reward for beating them. And when your rival is operating at the peak of their powers with a head coach that’s especially fun to hate, bonus points.

Louisville is certainly not Tennessee’s rival – the Vols won the first six meetings from 1913-1922, and the Cardinals have won 12 of the other 13 since – but Rick Pitino used to be. He went 14-3 against the Vols at Kentucky, winning the last nine in a row by an average of 25 points. Those nine games were my middle and high school days, and those blowouts gave me a significant amount of disdain for Pitino. But then he left for my beloved Boston Celtics; it was an odd feeling but, hey, the way he dominated at UK, surely he’ll bring championships back to Boston, right?

Nope: 36-46, 19-31 in the shortened 1999 season, 35-47, then fired after a 12-22 start. Larry Bird wasn’t walking through that door, but half the guys who played at Kentucky were.

Pitino went to Louisville, which had a four-year home-and-home agreement with Buzz Peterson’s Vols. And…one-point loss, three-point loss, three-point loss, blow out. Three years later the most successful Tennessee team in program history went to the Sweet 16, ran into Louisville as a three-seed…and lost by 19.

All of that to say this: no individual has done more damage with less return to more teams that I care about than Rick Pitino. And I’m mad he’s not on the sideline to get beat tonight.

Instead it’s Chris Mack, a great coach who made four Sweet 16’s and an Elite Eight in nine years at Xavier, plus won the Big East outright over Villanova last year. It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Louisville on the national stage for something other than Pitino and drama: after going Final Four, National Champs, Sweet 16, Elite Eight from 2012-15, the Cardinals were ineligible in 2016, got bounced in the second round in 2017, and fell to the NIT during their tumultuous 2018.

A 9-9 finish in the ACC is still nothing to sneeze at; the Cardinals finished 38th in KenPom but graduated their starting point guard and lost three others early to the NBA. They’ve played a lot of no one in their 3-0 start – Nicholls State, Southern, and Vermont – but do jump out at you statistically in a couple of ways.

The Cardinals are fifth nationally in effective field goal percentage and first in the country in free throw rate. In the opener against Nicholls, Louisville went 42-of-55 (!!!!!!) at the line. Nicholls went 12-of-16. In a 50-point win over Southern, they were 31-of-39. Against Vermont, 26-of-33. The Cardinals are 27th nationally in free throws attempted and 21 of the teams ahead of them have played at least five games; Louisville has played three.

So yeah, these dudes get to the line. Jordan Nwora (6’7″) averages 18-6, V.J. King (6’6″) averages 11-4, and Akoy Agau (6’8″) averages 7-7. Throw in 6’11” Malik Williams, and you’ve got plenty of length to go around in the rotation, plus a really hot shooting guard in Darius Perry. It looks like a Pitino team. The good news: Tennessee, so far, has been much better at defending without fouling this year. Their 50 personal fouls on the season rank 327th in the nation.

The good guys have been playing their starting five a bunch of minutes early: between 28.6 for Kyle Alexander and 33.7 for Admiral Schofield. Fulkerson and Pons have been the go-to’s off the bench, but it’ll be interesting to see how Lamonte Turner factors into the equation in his first game back.

Of course, Kansas is out there waiting. There’s a scenario here where the Vols could sweep the week and find themselves ranked second in the nation next week, behind the winner of Duke and, I’m assuming, Gonzaga in Maui. The Vols are currently ranked fifth and could/should get a shot at the #2 Jayhawks on Friday. Virginia is at #4, but their Battle 4 Atlantis field isn’t as strong this year, with only #25 Wisconsin ranked in the rest of the bracket.

That’s all getting ahead of ourselves, but when you’re ranked this high that’s what Thanksgiving basketball is all about: let’s see what we’ve got against the best of the best and file it away for March. The Vols are certainly playing to win the SEC again, but also to get as far up the bracket as possible. A shot at Kansas lets you take your temperature; beating the Jayhawks allows you to stay in the top-line national conversation.

But to get there, we’ll have to go through Louisville first. 5:00 PM ET, ESPN2. Happy Thanksgiving.

Two big truths from Tennessee’s last outing against Louisiana: one, “Does this team have anyone who can guard Grant Williams?” is still the first question to ask. When the answer is no, you get Friday’s performance: 31 points and 7 rebounds made Williams #2 in the early KenPom Player of the Year standings. (Zion Williamson is third, for what it’s worth.)

But we already knew about him. The bigger news: as we speculated in our season preview, the Vols gave some of the minutes that went to James Daniel last year to Yves Pons. Then they put the 6’6″ Pons on Louisiana’s point guard. And it worked.

Aside from all the excitement about what Pons’ athleticism can do on the offensive end, if he can give the Vols quality bench minutes while harassing the other team’s point guard? That levels up an already-great Tennessee defense. It’s early, but it was a very encouraging sign. We’ll get our chance to see more against major conference competition now: Georgia Tech, then Louisville, with #1 Kansas lurking.

First, Georgia Tech. A four-year series with the Yellow Jackets comes to an end tonight. Rick Barnes’ first team fell by two points in his second game, victimized by a 35/27/53 shooting line (FG/3P/FT%). One of the earliest signs of what could be under Barnes was the second game with the Yellow Jackets: after near misses against Wisconsin and Oregon in Maui, the Vols obliterated Georgia Tech 81-58 in Knoxville. Tennessee’s leading scorers that day were a freshman named Grant Williams and point guard Shembari Phillips, who eventually transferred to…Georgia Tech. He had to sit out last year, when the Vols won 77-70 in Atlanta behind 24 off the bench from Lamonte Turner. But he started GT’s season opener against Lamar, scoring 10 points with four assists and three steals in an 88-69 win.

Josh Pastner’s crew started ACC play 3-1 last year with wins over Miami and Notre Dame. They were still 11-11 (4-5) at the end of January. Then they lost seven straight, six by double digits. A first round exit in the ACC Tournament made them 13-19 (6-12) on the season, a disappointing end after an NIT runner-up finish the year before.

Josh Okogie is now a Minnesota Timberwolf, but the Yellow Jackets bring back guards Brandon Alston and Jose Alvarado to team with Phillips in the back court. Alvarado excelled in stealing the ball last season, finishing 131st nationally in steal percentage.

What to know about tonight’s match-up:

• This was simply a bad shooting team last year. Georgia Tech finished 283rd in FG% and 325th in three point percentage (31.8%). Alvarado is their best returning shooter from the arc and he hit only 37%.
• Last year Georgia Tech’s best basketball was about defending inside the arc. The Yellow Jackets surrendered just 45.4% from two, 24th nationally. They finished 23rd in blocked shots; 6’10” Sylvester Ogbonda looks to be the primary threat there, who played sparingly last year due to injuries. By contrast, teams splashed 37.9% from behind the arc against the Yellow Jackets last year, 320th nationally. The Vols are already good at creating open threes, but it could be an even easier task tonight.
• A patient pace? Last year Georgia Tech was 277th in tempo, almost even with the Vols at 282nd. Tennessee looked plenty good against Louisiana, who loves to go up-tempo. The Yellow Jackets will be a good early test to see if the Vols want to go any faster this season against a team that won’t encourage them to do so. We know the Vols can win in a number of different ways. Let’s see if they prefer to speed Georgia Tech up just a bit.

It’s a late start: 9:00 PM ET on ESPN2. Last chance to catch the Vols before they’re in New York for Thanksgiving next week.

It’s a progressive opening run for Tennessee: after a D-II blowout win, the Vols will be tested up the ladder by Louisiana tonight (120th in KenPom), Georgia Tech (90th) on Tuesday, then Louisville (66th) in the preseason NIT with a chance to face #1 Kansas.

The Ragin’ Cajuns went 27-7 last year, easily winning the Sun Belt at 16-2 before a 71-68 loss in the conference tournament sent them to the NIT. They lost in the opening round to LSU 84-76, book-ending their season with losses to SEC teams with a 94-76 beat down from Ole Miss in the opener.

Their leading scorer graduated, but there are plenty of points left to go around: Louisiana dropped 121 on the University of the Virgin Islands in the opener, with six players in double figures. They scored 100+ six times last year, and they dominated the rest of the Sun Belt on the glass, leading the league in offensive and defensive rebounding percentage (via KenPom). Overall the Cajuns were sixth nationally in offensive rebounding percentage, but they also graduated Bryce Washington (6’6″ 255) who led those efforts.

Louisiana started a three-forward lineup that went 6’6″, 6’6″, and 6’8″ in the opener. None have the bulk of Washington, but they also didn’t need many offensive rebounds while shooting 14-of-24 from the arc. Last year these guys were just really good at taking advantage everywhere: 76.1% from the free throw line and 46.4% from the floor. Their defense also seemed to chase people away from the three point line, giving up the 52nd-fewest threes attempted on the season despite playing at such a fast pace and playing from in front so often in the Sun Belt.

Jakeenan Grant also excelled as a shot blocker, sending back 9.1% of the shots against him, 39th nationally. Point guard Marcus Stroman was 14th nationally in assist rate (10 assists in the season opener), 80th in steal rate, and fourth nationally in free throw rate. He clearly makes things go for the rest of their offense. 

This is an experienced team that’s used to winning and each other. It’ll be interesting to see what Tennessee elects to do with a team that wants to score a bunch of points in an efficient manner. They were 55th nationally in KenPom offense last season, and could continue to excel even without their best scorer and rebounder from last season.

It’s a good early test for the Vols as they continue to build toward New York City. 7:00 PM, SEC Network.

It all starts tonight for the #6 Vols. That’s the highest preseason ranking in program history, and better than any preseason ranking in football since 2005. These are good days. Enjoy them.

Lenoir-Rhyne shouldn’t find much to enjoy tonight, the Division II alma mater of Rick Barnes. As such, we shouldn’t learn a whole lot about the Vols, at least not until Friday when the Rajun Cajuns (a 27-7 NIT squad last year) come calling. More on them later. For now, in the absence of specific details to watch for against a D-II squad, here’s something to keep an eye on as the season unfolds:

#Vols coach Rick Barnes: I feel comfortable with a 10-man rotation on this team. I really do. I think we can manage that and play really well.

— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) November 1, 2018

So, what will this look like?

Last year the Vols had two primary lineups: one with Kyle Alexander and two of Bone, Bowden, and Turner. And one without Alexander where all three guards played together with Schofield and Williams. Lineups with some combination of those six players made up 42.9% of Tennessee’s minutes down the stretch of the season last year according to KenPom’s data.

Derrick Walker’s minutes varied by the opponent last year: before getting 18 minutes in Alexander’s absence against Loyola-Chicago, Walker played 9-22 minutes four times and 2-6 minutes three times in the last seven games. John Fulkerson got lots of run early, then played only a single minute (when Grant Williams fouled out?) against Georgia around three DNPs in late February/early March. Then he played 7-15 minutes in the last four games of the year.

The winner of the preseason chatter award on this team seems to be Yves Pons, who saw no SEC action until late January, then became a four minutes per game guy, then averaged seven per game in the last four. There are guard minutes up for grabs with James Daniel’s graduation. Yves isn’t going to run the point, but could he guard one on the other end for a few minutes?

The tenth man, if you believe freshman DJ Burns is headed for a redshirt, should be Jalen Johnson. He gave the Vols nine minutes in the win over Texas A&M, but otherwise wasn’t relied on for more than a couple minutes here and there in non-blowouts. Will Barnes utilize Johnson as a true member of the rotation, or will he just earn the same spot minutes?

Tennessee can be the same team in crunch time, both the with-and-without Kyle Alexander versions, if they choose to be. But in the other 36ish minutes, how will Barnes tinker? After needing 31+ minutes from Armani Moore, Kevin Punter, and Robert Hubbs his first two years, last season Barnes had the luxury of not needing any more than 28 minutes from Williams and Schofield. If the Vols go 10-deep, how consistent will the rotations be? Is there room for a breakthrough from Pons or Walker with so much traffic ahead of them? And how long will it take for this team to find its groove?

It all starts tonight.

The symphony begins. pic.twitter.com/7C04S1Ntnn

— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) November 6, 2018

One of the greatest indicators of health for last year’s basketball team was the absence of any real blueprint for success. From our post on the eve of the NCAA Tournament:

• The Vols are 19-3 when shooting at least 33.3% from three. But they also beat Florida, Texas A&M, and won at Rupp Arena shooting less than that.
• The Vols are 17-0 when holding their opponent under 40% from the floor. But they also beat Kentucky twice when the Cats shot above that.
• The Vols are 14-0 when assisting on at least 64% of their made shots. But they beat Purdue and Kentucky when assisting on less than half of their makes.
• Grant Williams has scored 20+ eight times, but the Vols lost two of those games. Meanwhile one of their best performances of the year was at Mississippi State, when he had eight.
• Admiral Schofield has scored 20+ seven times, but only two of those came against tournament teams (Kentucky twice). Meanwhile the Vols beat nine-seed NC State in the Bahamas when Schofield had zero.
• The Vols are 13-2 when Jordan Bowden scores double digits, but just annihilated Arkansas in the SEC Tournament when he had two points.

(All these stats come from the fine folks at Sports Reference)

After two years of needing big numbers from Kevin Punter or Robert Hubbs in seasons that went south when their health did, the 2018 Vols were far more than one-dimensional. They beat big-name opponents in multiple ways, and finished in the Top 50 nationally in a variety of stats: three-point shooting percentage, free throw shooting percentage, offensive rebounding, assist percentage, blocked shot percentage, field goal percentage defense, and three-point percentage defense.

The Vols are well-rounded and get almost everyone back. They’re defending SEC Champions with the highest preseason ranking in program history. Things look really good.

How can the Vols be even better?

Two-Point Field Goal Percentage

Last year only two tournament teams – not at-large teams, but the entire field of 68 – had a worse shooting percentage inside the arc than Tennessee: 16-seed Radford (shout out to my southwest Virginia neighbors), and 11-seed Syracuse who played in the First Four. The Vols made 47.3% of their shots from two, 278th nationally.

Kyle Alexander is tremendous at this, ranking 18th nationally on shooting percentage inside the arc at 67.9%. The rest of the Vols? Not so much.

The short version: the Vols don’t have a bunch of guys who finish well at the rim, or guards who create their own shot. The latter is probably by design in part: as you can see above, Tennessee excels at offensive rebounding, getting to the free throw line, and knocking them down. And the Vols’ exceptional ball movement – remember, Tennessee led the nation in assist percentage for much of the year and finished seventh – created plenty of open looks from three. It was an offense that finished 36th nationally in KenPom. It’s certainly not broken. But to get to a championship level, Tennessee needs to be more efficient from two.

Jordan Bowden was a better shooter from three (39.5%) than two (39.2%). Jordan Bone and Lamonte Turner were only slightly better. On the other end of the spectrum, one player to watch here is Derrick Walker. He’s the only player on the roster (with freshman DJ Burns looking at a possible redshirt) with the size and strength to get away with it, but he made 59.6% of his attempts from two. Will Tennessee run more of its offense through big men down low to get higher percentage looks? This is the other side of the coin of something else the Vols could do better:

Shoot More Threes…?

We looked at this at the end of the season back in March. The Vols shot 38% from three, 45th nationally. But only 35.7% of Tennessee’s shot attempts were threes, 220th nationally. If 65ish% of your attempts are twos, and you’re not a great two-point shooting team…should the Vols just jack it up more?

Tennessee’s three-point shooting last year was bolstered by so many players knocking them down. Bowden, Turner, Bone, and Schofield were all 38-40% shooters from three. The Vols do lose James Daniel, who hit 37.2%.

We know Tennessee can create good looks inside-out thanks to Williams and Schofield. Should the Vols take more of those looks? Or will the greatest room for improvement come from Alexander and Walker growing their scoring footprint in the paint, thus improving Tennessee’s percentage inside the arc?

Foul Less

Tennessee was 36th nationally in fouls last year, despite playing the 282nd fastest pace in college basketball. Some of this is the nature of the beast when you have undersized bigs and are aggressive defensively. And the Vols didn’t necessarily lose because of this alone, as teams shot 71% at the line against UT, an average 151st nationally.

But Grant Williams averaged 3.3 fouls per game, and fouled out six times. It was most costly in the loss at Arkansas, but the Vols also fell to Villanova, Missouri, and at Georgia when Williams was disqualified. They did beat Georgia Tech, and famously won the SEC by beating Georgia in the rematch after he fouled out. And when you run the numbers per minute, the Vols had lots of foul-happy reserves, led by Derrick Walker and Yves Pons. This isn’t just one player’s issue.

There’s clearly no need for a team that finished sixth in KenPom defensive efficiency to change its identity. But even fouling a little less, with guys like Williams playing fewer minutes with four fouls, can make a difference this season.

My web browser marks the changing seasons as well as anything. Right now my most visited sites include Sports Source Analytics and the hubs for my fantasy football team and our weekly pick ’em contest. But soon, they will give way to Basketball Reference, the Bracket Matrix, and of course, KenPom.com. A moment of silence for RPI Forecast, a longtime friend of the blog from back when we were trying to figure out if Cuonzo Martin’s first team could play their way in from a triple-digit RPI in December. The NCAA is moving on to something they call NET, which one can only hope will find an obsessive website of its own.

The move away from RPI is a nice step forward, but KenPom remains king of the advanced stats conversation. Last year the Vols were picked 13th in the SEC in the media poll. KenPom had the Vols sixth in his 2017-18 preseason ratings, and 43rd nationally.

This year’s preseason ratings have swung the other way, of course, with the Vols now the hunted. Tennessee is sixth in the AP poll, the program’s highest preseason rating ever. Tennessee is down at 11th in the initial 2018-19 KenPom ratings, but here the rating is more important than the ranking.

The Vols are at +21.14 (the number of points they’re expected to win by vs the average team in 100 possessions). Last year Tennessee finished at +22.27, the second-highest rating of the KenPom era (since 2002). The 2008 Vols finished at +22.17. Tennessee’s KenPom leader, as we like to point out from time to time, is actually Cuonzo Martin’s last team at +23.69. Like S&P+ in college football, it’s not a measure of your resume (and doesn’t value an end-of-game play more than the first possession; so the 2014 Vols aren’t punished for Antwan Space’s theatrics). It’s a measure of your efficiency on every possession; I always like to think of it as, “Which team would I least like to play?” Cuonzo’s Vols were bad at closing games (and finished 341st in KenPom’s luck ratings in 2014), but put more players in the NBA than any Tennessee team in my lifetime. Doing things like beating #1 seed Virginia by 35 and winning eight of nine before the Michigan loss by an average of 21 points is how you get that kind of rating.

This year the Vols are in a crowded field of teams, but I don’t know if I’d call it the second tier. In KenPom’s ratings, only one team is set apart in the preseason rankings: Kansas, also number one in the AP and Coaches’ polls. The Jayhawks are +29.27, nearly four points better than Duke at +25.44.

Think of it this way: for Tennessee, how many teams out there are simply better than us?

The Vols faced Villanova last November and battled for a half. But the Wildcats outscored Tennessee by 21 in the second half, winning by nine. And the proof was ultimately in the pudding: Nova won the title for the second time in three years, and amassed a +33.76 rating. Other than Kentucky’s almost-undefeated 2015 squad (+36.91), it was the best rating of any team in ten years.

Villanova was just better than us, and while anything can happen on any given night in a single elimination sport, there was no shame in losing to that Nova team. The early ratings suggest there’s only one such team this season: Kansas, who the Vols may get a shot at over Thanksgiving in New York City.

The usual suspects from Duke, North Carolina, and of course Kentucky are all ranked higher than Tennessee in KenPom. But their ratings are all within about three points of the Vols. With Rick Barnes you know you’ll get plenty of chances to find out what you’ve got: aside from a possible date with Kansas and the SEC opportunities, Gonzaga and West Virginia are rated ninth and tenth in KenPom as well. You won’t have to wonder about Tennessee, but it’s not just the good feelings from last year that suggest the Vols should have every chance to win against everyone, only a little less true against Kansas.

What’s more, last year SB Nation’s Villanvoa blog looked at the KenPom profiles of national champions. With one outlier – 2014 UConn, who won it all as a #7 seed – every national champion has finished in the Top 20 of both KenPom offense and defense. That list in the 2018-19 preseason ratings: Kansas, Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, Villanova, Kentucky, Syracuse, Gonzaga, and Tennessee.

There’s a lot to be excited about. And the numbers back up the idea that the Vols were far more than a feel-good story last year. If healthy, Tennessee shouldn’t find themselves at a disadvantage against almost anyone. And, along with plenty of other marquee opportunities this year, they might get to find out about the almost in just a few weeks.

It’s not been a good news week, with the 26-point loss to West Virginia and the injury to Brandon Kennedy. But the most significant thing to happen in Tennessee’s athletic department in the last seven days was this:

#Vols’ Rick Barnes now the 10th-highest-paid coach in college basketball and No. 2 behind only John Calipari in the SEC: https://t.co/fKW3yzQyN9 per @GrantRamey pic.twitter.com/SYQ5eWxJ3c

— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) September 6, 2018

Rick Barnes will be 70 if he serves the length of this contract through 2023-24. At some point between now and then, I’m sure there will be conversation on a timetable for retirement and if his successor should come from within the staff, etc. Phillip Fulmer will be 74 when Barnes’ deal is up, and may not be making those decisions anymore.

But Fulmer, Barnes, and everyone involved with this week’s decision took a big step for Tennessee basketball. And whenever whoever follows both of them, the program has a chance to be far better for it.

As Grant Ramey points out, Barnes was previously the 10th-highest paid coach in the SEC, 35th nationally. While bigger contracts must be earned, Barnes’ initial salary represented the tail end of a long period of bargain shopping for basketball coaches. While other programs like Florida have had more recent success, Tennessee can rightfully fancy itself as the second-most decorated basketball program in the SEC. But it cannot win that argument when paying its coach at a bottom-third rate.

It makes sense for Barnes to be the second-highest paid coach in the league behind John Calipari, given both his past at Texas and the work he did last season. Whoever takes the job next may not carry the same credentials or command the same rate. But since Doug Dickey hired Kevin O’Neill from Marquette and replaced him with Jerry Green from Oregon, Tennessee had shopped exclusively in the mid-major aisle: Buzz Peterson (Tulsa), Bruce Pearl (Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Cuonzo Martin (Missouri State), and Donnie Tyndall (Southern Miss). The Vols can thank good timing for Barnes being available when Tyndall was let go, or Dave Hart may have taken us down that path again.

Other big-name SEC programs have made mid-major hires like Mike White at Florida or Bryce Drew at Vanderbilt. Sometimes it’s the best play available. But the primary reason the SEC made so much progress the last few years is because of its coaches. Along with Barnes, Mike Anderson, Bruce Pearl, Tom Crean, Ben Howland, Cuonzo Martin, and Frank Martin were all previously employed by a power conference school. Kentucky obviously got the guy they wanted. Avery Johnson came from the NBA. And you can argue the current mid-major hires – Mike White, Will Wade, Bryce Drew, Kermit Davis, and Billy Kennedy – all had resumes relatively stronger than the guys Tennessee hired before Barnes. Obviously Bruce Pearl was dynamite here and Cuonzo Martin made the Sweet 16; both of those guys are back in the league and the tournament now. But the bar has been raised in the SEC. Tennessee giving Barnes and his staff this kind of money suggests they’ll seek to clear it well into the future.