Kentucky Outlasts Tennessee 77-72; On To The Bracket

A thrilling comeback made for a thrilling game, but Kentucky used a pair of offensive rebounds to turn a 62-61 Tennessee lead with five minutes to play into an advantage they would never relinquish. Jordan Bone’s corner pocket three cut the lead back to one with 1:26 to go, but the story of the day was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and he buried a step-back jumper in reponse. SGA had 29 points on 10-of-16 shooting, and the Vols had no answer for the game’s best player. He kept the Cats in front at the end, and Kentucky wins the SEC Tournament 77-72.

The Vols were dead and buried before Admiral Schofield knocked down three threes late in the first half, trimming a 17-point Kentucky lead to five at the break. Schofield, who left the game for a few minutes in the second half after a loose ball scramble knocked him to the floor, had 22 points and 10 rebounds.

But it wasn’t enough to overcome SGA and 7-of-16 from the arc from the Wildcats, who go to 23-3 when shooting better than 29% from three. This game had the feeling of a second weekend tournament affair, and both teams should feel confident about their ability to get there.

We’ll find out the path at 6:00 PM ET; Tennessee’s should still go through Nashville.

SEC Tournament Championship TV channel, tip time, and online game-watching party

The Vols will play for their first SEC Tournament Championship since 1979 at 1:00 today against Kentucky. ESPN has the broadcast.

 

Game info

Go Vols! I’ll be in the game thread as soon as I finish my pizza. 🙂

 

Vols Torch Arkansas, Face Kentucky in the Finals

On Friday, the Vols won an out-of-character contest against Mississippi State despite season highs in turnovers, missed free throws, and shots blocked. On Saturday, the pendulum swung.

Against Arkansas, the Vols hit 11-of-17 from the arc, a season-high 64.7%. Jordan Bone, James Daniel, and Lamonte Turner splashed three each, and Admiral Schofield added two others. The Vols jumped out to a 6-0 lead, then Daniel and John Fulkerson unleashed a 10-0 run at the eight minute mark to put the Vols up 17. That’s the sentence you were expecting to read, I know.

It was 19 at halftime on the strength of 19-of-25 from the floor in the first 20 minutes, an unbelievable 76%. That sort of fire can’t last, but Tennessee’s defense and excellent free throw shooting made sure Arkansas got no closer than 11 in the second half.

The win puts Tennessee in good position to earn a trip to Nashville for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. The Vols are eighth in RPI and putting on a good show in St. Louis, while teams from the Big Ten take the week off. And I wouldn’t rule out a No. 2 seed just yet, especially with a win tomorrow.

And tomorrow, a special piece of history will be on the table.

The Vols haven’t won the SEC Tournament since 1979. LSU won the league that year, but Tennessee beat Kentucky twice in the regular season, then took down the Cats in overtime in the tournament finals. Appropriately, it is Kentucky who will stand between Rick Barnes’ squad and a bigger slice of immortality tomorrow.

This team already has a piece of that pie, having won the SEC regular season championship. And, like everyone else, its ultimate destiny will be decided over the next few weeks. But not only does it have a chance to do something truly special tomorrow, it is also playing its best basketball in the present.

I thought we might have seen it the last time we faced Kentucky at Rupp Arena. Then I thought we saw it in Starkville two weeks ago. You can’t expect to shoot 76% every night or 65% from the arc, no doubt. But Rick Barnes’ team is relentlessly committed to improvement. The Vols have won 16 of their last 19 games. They are up to 11th in KenPom. They just keep getting better.

And they will need to in order to earn a three-game sweep of Kentucky. The game in Rupp Arena was as even as any I’ve seen, both in the box score and in its flow. The entire contest was played within one possession other than a four-point Tennessee lead that lasted 10 seconds. Tennessee won because they made the plays at the end of the game, including two of their nine steals on the night. The Vol defense was opportunistic against Arkansas today as well.

Kentucky isn’t a complicated animal: they’re 22-3 when shooting better than 29% from the arc, 1-7 when they don’t. We’ve seen both sides of that coin: they were 3-of-14 (21.4%) at Rupp, but did shoot 7-of-19 (36.8%) in Knoxville and still lost.

The Vols will need to dodge the kind of shooting performance we saw from Kentucky and Wenyen Gabriel today, and keep Kentucky’s size off the offensive glass and away from the foul line. Rick Barnes, who is 4-2 against Kentucky at UT, always uses undersized bigs like Armani Moore and Admiral Schofield to attack Kentucky; Schofield’s 16 shot attempts were the most for any Vol at Rupp, and I would expect something similar again tomorrow.

There is already so much to celebrate with this team, and so much still ahead of it no matter what happens tomorrow. This one will get to stand on its own, as Kentucky stands in their way one more time.

1:00 PM ET, ESPN. Wear your orange to church.

Go Vols.

SEC Tournament Semifinals: Tennessee vs Arkansas Preview

If last night felt weird, that’s because it was:

  • 33.3% from the field was Tennessee’s second-lowest shooting performance of the season.
  • 60.7% from the free throw line was Tennessee’s second-worst performance of the season, barely beating a 6-of-10 night against LSU. Eleven missed free throws were a season high.
  • Twenty offensive rebounds was a season high, by far. The Vols had 16 against Purdue and North Carolina (a good sign that the Vols can hang on the offensive glass when playing teams with tremendous size).
  • Seventeen turnovers tied a season high (Wake Forest).
  • Mississippi State had one assist. One. That’s unheard of, and is obviously a season high for Tennessee’s defense. The fewest assists for a previous opponent was six…also from Mississippi State.
  • Eight blocked shots for Mississippi State is the most any team has scored against the Vols this year. The Bulldogs’ size again clearly affected Grant Williams, and this time Tennessee wasn’t nearly as clean in running the rest of their offense.

But…we won. And today’s game should be much more pleasing to the eye.

Way back on December 30, Tennessee played 36 of its best minutes of the year. The Vols led Arkansas 70-61 in Fayetteville with 3:53 to go. Twenty seconds later, Grant Williams picked up his fourth foul. And then, chaos.

Arkansas scored 61 points in the game’s first 36 minutes, then 34 points in the last four minutes of regulation and five minutes of overtime. A frustrating component in several of Tennessee’s losses – a preventable turnover in the final minutes – really sparked the Arkansas rally: splashing a three, getting a steal, and getting a layup turned an eight point game into a one possession affair. The Vols still had a chance to win with 18 seconds left in regulation, but Jordan Bone only hit one of two free throws and the game went to overtime. Williams fouled out at the end of regulation and Admiral Schofield followed in the first minute of overtime. With Tennessee’s defense fundamentally altered by foul trouble, Arkansas exploded. Daryl Macon finished with 33 points, Jaylen Barford with 28.

Offensively, the Arkansas game was Tennessee’s best scoring performance from its guards: 21 from Jordan Bone, 17 from James Daniel, and 10 from Lamonte Turner. But that’s not Tennessee’s best basketball: we should see the Vols again try to play more through Williams and Schofield inside-out today.

As advertised, Arkansas has an incredibly efficient offense. The Razorbacks shoot 40.1% from the arc, 12th nationally. And they only turn it over on 15.2% of their possessions, 17th nationally, this despite playing the 28th-fastest pace in college basketball. Tennessee dictated the tempo for those first 36 minutes of the previous encounter, Arkansas for the last nine.

The Razorbacks struggle to keep teams off the glass because they want to get out and run, so offensive rebounds are there for the taking (Arkansas is 295th nationally in defensive rebounding percentage). They also foul a lot, 27th nationally, which means Tennessee needs to shoot better than the 69.2% they put up from the line in Fayetteville.

Tennessee’s objective is to stay physical in attacking the Arkansas defense, but do so at the pace they set instead of allowing Arkansas’ guards to turn this into a shootout. It worked really well until Grant Williams got his fourth foul last time. That first meeting also included 11 minutes from John Fulkerson and nine from Chris Darrington; if Rick Barnes sticks with the lineups he’s been using, it’ll be more Yves Pons and Derrick Walker today.

After a surprise run to the finals led by Allan Houston in 1991, Tennessee didn’t play on Saturday in the SEC Tournament from 1992-2007. Since then the Vols have seen Saturday in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2014. But they’ve only seen Sunday once since 1991, in 2009. And the Vols still haven’t won this thing since 1979.

A lot of history, a potential three-game sweep of Kentucky, and the continued pursuit of Nashville is on the line today against Arkansas. This game should be much more fun to watch. Let’s hope the outcome is the same.

Alabama and Kentucky go at 1:00 PM ET, then the Vols and Razorbacks will follow. This is only the fourth time the Vols have been on ESPN this year. Have you heard we were picked 13th in the league?

Go Vols.

 

Vols advance to the SEC Tourney semifinals with win over Bulldogs

Tennessee shook off some rust and sloppiness to beat Mississippi State 62-59 this evening and advance to the semifinals of the SEC Tournament.

It wasn’t pretty.

The Vols had 17 turnovers, shot 33.3% from the field, 25% from the arc, and 60.7% from the free throw line. Grant Williams had only 10 points on 3-of-12 shooting, and Admiral Schofield managed only 13 points on 4-of-12 shooting.

But it was enough.

Despite not shooting well, Tennessee did turn in a good performance on the boards and on defense. They had a 50-33 total rebound advantage over the Bulldogs, 22-10 on the offensive glass. And Lamonte Turner nearly had a double-double, scoring a team-high 15 points and pulling down 8 rebounds to go along with 4 steals.

Tennessee was mostly in control for much of the game, although both teams seemed to be (understandably) rattled for an extended period of time after a scary injury to Nick Weatherspoon, who was carted off on a stretcher early in the second half. He’d landed hard underneath the basket and stayed there while play continued. When his brother and teammate Quindarry Weatherspoon drove toward the basket on a fastbreak after a steal, no official stopped the play, and both Quindarry and Kyle Alexander (who was defending and in pursuit) landed on Nick. Alexander appeared to inadvertently land with a foot on Weatherspoon’s head and neck area, and Weatherspoon remained motionless for several minutes before being secured to a stretcher and taken to the hospital. Prayers for him and his family. The latest report:

When both teams had regained their footing, Mississippi State continued to threaten, but the Vols managed to stay ahead of each threat. The Bulldogs had an excellent chance to take the lead on their last possession of the game:

It was a good shot, but they missed, and so the Vols advance. They’ll play the winner of the Arkansas-Florida game that is being played right now. The tip for that game is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. ET.

Vols-Bulldogs SEC Tournament TV channel, tip time, and online game-watching party

The Vols play their first game of the SEC Tournament this evening against Mississippi State. The game tips at 7:00 p.m. and will be shown on the SEC Network.

Will posted the Vols game preview this morning, and you can hear him talking about it on the radio this afternoon right here:

Auburn lost this afternoon to Alabama, improving the Vols’ chances to open NCAA Tournament play close to home in Nashville, assuming they take care of business themselves. Here’s to hoping that starts with the Bulldogs tonight.

Game info

 

Go Vols!

 

SEC Tournament Quarterfinals: Tennessee vs Mississippi State Preview

When last we met…was 11 days ago. Tennessee played its best game of the year in Starkville, turning a 25-17 deficit into a 76-54 victory. The talking points from that win:

  • Mississippi State put 6’10” Aric Holdman and 6’11” Abdul Ado on the floor at the same time, and made it their business to deny Grant Williams. It worked on Williams, who had just three shots and eight points. But it left no answer for Admiral Schofield, who scored 24 points.
  • Tennessee went to Schofield and didn’t just settle for threes when Williams wasn’t a good option. The Vols were just 4-of-11 from the arc, but at one point made 11 consecutive field goals in the second half. The Bulldogs are a good defensive team – 42nd in efficiency – but had no answer for Tennessee.
  • Quinndary Weatherspoon had 17 points, but the Vols took away everything else. Mississippi State made just two shots in the first eight minutes of the second half, and Tennessee’s defense encouraged them to take threes. MSU went 4-of-20 in that game, and is 342nd nationally from the arc on the year at 30.1%.

In the last three games, Tennessee’s defense has been selling out to run shooters off the three-point line (Florida), or encouraging the opponent to fire away (Mississippi State, Georgia). The former leaves the Vols vulnerable to offensive rebounds. But the latter can negate an advantage big teams like the Bulldogs often enjoy. Mississippi State is 79th nationally in offensive rebounding percentage, but grabbed only five against Tennessee. I don’t know if we can bank on MSU shooting 20% from the arc again, but I’d imagine the Vols will once again take their chances.

The Bulldogs rise to 67 in RPI, and have to know what a win over Tennessee would do for their NCAA Tournament resume. The same was true 11 days ago, but it’s especially do-or-die now.

Meanwhile Tennessee continues to play for upward mobility in the bracket, and a trip to Nashville in the first and second rounds. We put this in the comments from Wednesday’s look at championship week, but here again is the easiest way to understand what the Vols need to get to Nashville, using projected seeding from the Bracket Matrix. Each of the eight first and second round sites can host two top-four seeds. The committee will start with the number one overall seed and place teams in the closest geographical opening. So if the matrix is a good guide, the field would look like this right now:

  • 1A Virginia (Charlotte)
  • 1B Villanova (Pittsburgh)
  • 1C Xavier (Detroit)
  • 1D Kansas (Wichita)
  • 2A Duke (Charlotte)
  • 2B North Carolina (Nashville)
  • 2C Purdue (Detroit)
  • 2D Cincinnati (Pittsburgh)
  • 3A Auburn (Nashville)
  • 3B Michigan State (Wichita)
  • 3C Tennessee (Dallas)
  • 3D Michigan (Dallas)

If the committee agrees with the matrix and the Vols are the third No. 3 seed, they need to move past two teams to find their way to Music City next weekend. The Big Ten held their tournament last weekend, so there is no additional opportunity for Purdue, Michigan State, or Michigan to impress the committee. But Michigan or Michigan State would still go to Nashville over Tennessee because it’s far closer to the Spartans and Wolverines than Wichita or Dallas (or Boise and San Diego, where every four seed will land).

Meanwhile Auburn faces Alabama in the SEC Tournament’s first quarterfinal game today at 1:00 PM ET. The Vols need to win, but could use some help from an Auburn (or even Cincinnati) loss. The Vols can still get to Nashville even if they’re a No. 3 seed, it just looks like they’ll need to be the first No. 3 seed.

Man, this math is a lot more fun than calculating the bubble.

The journey continues at 7:00 PM ET tonight. Go Vols.

Gameday Today: SEC Tourney Time

If you watch only one Vols-related thing this morning . . .

. . . make it this from the SEC Network:

That’s some high-grade and particularly tasty rat poison right there.

Hoops

The thing is, the Vols are really in a nice sort of win-win situation this weekend. They could win the SEC Tournament, which would be cool, but if they lose, hey, they get more rest (and possibly some additional motivation) for the more important NCAA Tournament.

That, of course, does not mean that they aren’t working:

Mississippi State beat LSU last night 80-77, so Tennessee’s opponent at 7:00 p.m. tonight will be the Bulldogs. The game is on the SEC Network. Be sure to check out Will’s preview of the game. We’ll have the game thread posted later this afternoon.

Football

Jeremy Pruitt has added former Alabama nutritionist Rachel Pfister to Tennessee’s staff.

Over at Bleacher Report, Brad says that Tennessee could maybe nab former Clemson running back C.J. Fuller as a grad transfer.

VFL Al Wilson has been inducted into the Senior Bowl Hall of Fame.

Other fun stuff

With apologies for rivals colors on this beautiful orange site, you have to admit that this is pretty funny:

Not funny is this deplorable evidence of a culture problem at a company owned by a prominent Tennessee booster.

SiriusXM now has an SEC radio channel.

Gameday Today: Hoops, culture, and the audacity of Butch Jones

If you read only one thing about the Vols today . . .

. . . make it the VolQuest article on team-building and culture under Rick Barnes. It’s subscription-only, but it’s worth it. Runner-up this morning is a reheat from GoVolsXtra on Barnes’ family and faith.

Hoops

Tennessee is seeking that balance between staying sharp and making the most of the rest afforded by the double-bye they earned for the SEC Tournament.

Despite coming off a historic season, some ESPN dude says they can’t win the NCAA Tournament because they shot worse from 2-point range than their opponents in conference play. Odds are they won’t win it all, but that reasoning is kicking my skeptical face contortions into overdrive.

If you’re looking for an SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament hub, the SEC Network has a good one.

Alvin Kamara

Kamara might be Superman, but he can’t resist Girl Scout cookies, either:


No, really. He didn’t just stop by for a photo, and he didn’t buy just a box or two. He bought them all:


Of course, unlike you and me, Kamara can get away with eating every box of Girl Scout cookies in the French Quarter because he also does stuff like this:


Football

The Vols have added quarterback Jacob Cendoya as a preferred walk-on to the Class of 2018.

Wanya Morris, a 4-star tackle, has narrowed his choices down to Tennessee and Auburn.

Other Vols tidbits

Oh, horror of horrors, Butch Jones is wearing clothes and talking to people!


The Sporting News is reporting that ESPN and Fox are willing to pay Peyton Manning $10M a year to help save Thursday Night NFL football. Even Jon Gruden only got $6.5M to do what he did.

Tennessee baseball lost 21-2 (!) to James Madison yesterday.

 

Championship Week: Nashville via St. Louis

The Vols are off until Friday night, plenty of time to celebrate an SEC Championship and an impressive slate of awards:

Rick Barnes is the first Vol to earn SEC Coach of the Year since Bruce Pearl in 2008. Ron Widby, Mike Edwards, Bernard King, Ernie Grunfeld, Dale Ellis, and Tony White combined to win eight SEC Player of the Year awards from 1967-87. But since then, only Ron Slay (2003) and Chris Lofton (2007) have captured the league’s biggest individual prize, which now belongs to Grant Williams.

It’s a great week. How might it get even greater for Tennessee?

In Tuesday’s Bracket Matrix (featuring 130 entries!) the Vols are the third No. 3 seed, with an average seeding of exactly 3; five entries have the Vols at No. 2, five at No. 4, and 120 at No. 3. That’s a pretty solid consensus. Is there any room for Tennessee to move up (or down)?

Here are what I believe to be fairly safe assumptions:

  • Virginia and Villanova are No. 1 seeds no matter what they do in their conference tournaments.
  • Xavier, Kansas, and Duke are fighting it out for the other two No. 1 seeds, but none of these teams are falling below the Vols.
  • The No. 4 seeds in the Bracket Matrix – Texas Tech, Wichita State, West Virginia, and Clemson – aren’t passing Tennessee without winning their conference tournaments.

The Vols can obviously help their own cause by winning their conference tournament; we’ll get to that later this week. But between now and then, a few targets above Tennessee in the matrix are in action in their respective tournaments. What losses would be meaningful to Tennessee’s chances?

Also on the table: trips to Nashville in weekend one and, potentially, Atlanta in weekend two. On this front, Tennessee’s neighbors on the three line are the biggest teams to watch. If seeded higher than Tennessee overall, Auburn and/or Cincinnati could secure an opening weekend in Nashville. This is why you’re seeing the Vols in Dallas in a lot of brackets today. The working assumption is Virginia and Duke will go to Charlotte, leaving North Carolina and a player to be named later in Nashville. Michigan or Michigan State (remember, the Big Ten is already done) could also slide in there depending on how things shake out. The Vols will need a good showing and some help to stay in-state.

What would that help look like? Here are games relevant to Tennessee’s chances to go to Nashville and move up the bracket this week:

WEDNESDAY

  • ACC Quarterfinals: North Carolina vs Syracuse – 9:00 PM – ESPN2

The Tar Heels did beat Tennessee and are currently a No. 2 in the matrix. But UNC also has nine losses, and will have 10 unless they win the ACC Tournament. No team has earned a No. 2 seed with 10 losses in the expansion era; Wikipedia’s detailed records go back to 1995, and I couldn’t find any there either. Carolina’s name brand will certainly count for something, but will the committee put them on the two line and/or ahead of the Vols if they make an early exit in Brooklyn? If the Tar Heels win here, they’ll face Miami at 9:00 PM on Thursday.

FRIDAY

  • American Quarterfinals: Cincinnati vs UConn/SMU – 12:00 PM – ESPN2
  • SEC Quarterfinals: Auburn vs Texas A&M/Alabama – 1:00 PM – ESPN

Chances aren’t great for Cincinnati getting upset: SMU is 87th in KenPom, UConn a lowly 174th. The Bearcats beat both of them by 25 the last time they saw them. But Auburn? Two of the five teams to beat the Tigers this year are Alabama and Texas A&M. If Auburn is bounced early and the Vols go deep into the weekend, Tennessee should at least move up the ladder for Nashville.