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The Tennessee Volunteers lay the 2017 football season to rest this afternoon with a game against the Vanderbilt Commodores. The game kicks off at 4:00 p.m. and will be televised on the SEC Network. It should be a good game, with each team looking for its first conference win of the season in its last chance.
Go Vols.
News is breaking now that Chip Kelly has agreed to become the next UCLA head coach and that Nebraska has fired Mike Riley. For Tennessee fans, that means that Kelly is off the board, that the Florida Gators are still in competition with the Vols for a coach, and that both the Gators and the Vols are in competition with Nebraska for current UCF head coach Scott Frost.
Kelly had probably already been eliminated from consideration, as the latest reports were that he was choosing between Florida and UCLA. Some Vols fans had hoped to see him at Florida so they wouldn’t go after Frost, but now you have to think that Tennessee and Florida may be co-suitors of both Frost and Dan Mullen.
More as it develops.
Time to play the Gameday on Rocky Top Guessing Game. If you have no idea what that is, you can find out everything you need to know here. Last week’s results are here.
Good luck, and Go Vols!
Among much bad news for the 2017 Tennessee Volunteer football team, there is at least this bit of good news: For its last game of the season, Tennessee will be playing against the worst rushing offense, the worst rushing defense, and the worst scoring defense it has seen all season.
Tennessee is averaging 123.1 rushing yards per game, while Vanderbilt is giving up 211.5 per game, which makes them the worst rushing defense the Vols will have faced the entire season. The closest comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent that is better at defending the run than Vanderbilt is Massachusetts, which is allowing 181.5. Tennessee got 135 on the ground against them. Based on all of that, my guess for rushing yards for Tennessee against Vanderbilt is 170.
The Tennessee defense is allowing 251.7 rushing yards per game, while the Vanderbilt run game is averaging 94.5 yards per game. That also makes Vandy the worst rushing offense Tennessee has seen all season. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is South Carolina, which is averaging 131.5 rushing yards per game and got 194 against Tennessee. I’m guessing Vanderbilt will get about 140 rushing yards against Tennessee’s defense.
Tennessee is averaging 172.8 passing yards per game, and Vanderbilt is allowing 195.6. The closest “not-as-good” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Georgia Tech, which is giving up 198.3 yards per game through the air, and Tennessee, in another life, put up 221 against them. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is LSU. They’re allowing 181.5 passing yards per game, and Tennessee got 249 against them. My guess is that Tennessee will put up 200 passing yards this weekend.
The Tennessee pass defense is allowing 150.6 passing yards per game. Vanderbilt is getting 240.0. The closest “not-as-good” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is South Carolina, which is getting 220.8 yards per game through the air, and they got 129 against Tennessee. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Southern Mississippi, which is averaging 256.5 passing yards per game and got 161 against Tennessee. I’m going with Vanderbilt putting up about 150 passing yards against Tennessee.
Tennessee is averaging 19.5 points per game, and Vanderbilt is allowing 32.0, which makes them the worst scoring defense the Vols have seen this year. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Missouri. They’re allowing 30.5 points per game, and Tennessee got 17 against them. My prediction is that Tennessee will score around 24 points against Vanderbilt.
Tennessee is allowing 27.9 points per game. Vanderbilt is averaging 23.0. The closest “not-as-good” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Florida, which is averaging 22.1 points, and they got 26 against Tennessee. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is South Carolina, which is averaging 25.4 points and got 15 against Tennessee. I’m going with Vanderbilt putting up about 21 points against Tennessee.
Those are my eyeball-adjusted predictions. For the record, the SPM itself is spitting out Tennessee 24.3, Vanderbilt 19.8.
The SPM mostly agrees with Vegas all the way around this week, as the spread opened at Tennessee -1, with an over/under of 45.5. That makes it look like Tennessee, 23-22 or so.
ESPN’s FPI gives the Vols a 69% chance of beating Vandy. S&P+ likes Vandy, but only with a gun pointed to its head, as the Vols have a 49% chance of winning. They project the score to be Vandy, 25.5-25.
So, the FPI, the SPM, and Vegas all like the Vols in a close one, and S&P+ is quibbling over decimals.
Here’s how the statsy preview machine did for the game between Tennessee and LSU last week.
Again, those were eyeball-adjusted numbers. The SPM itself said LSU 17.3, Tennessee 6.3.
The line was LSU -14, and the SPM said they woulldn’t cover, so no, the SPM lost this game against the spread. Overall, though, the SPM went 37-21 (63.79%) against the spread for the week. Over the six weeks we’ve been testing it, it’s gone 67.92%, 53.06%, 54.55%, 55.93%, 46.43%, and 63.79%, for an overall rate of 56.97%. It doesn’t understand the 2017 Tennessee Volunteer football team.
There is no chalk in Atlantis. The seventh-place game features #2 Arizona and #18 Purdue. #5 Villanova won’t see either of them this trip (not that their tournament resume should need the help). And Tennessee, who was supposed to lose to Purdue then face a pair of mid-major foes, will leave the Bahamas with three power conference opponents on their resume.
As such things go, it was always going to be better for the Vols to beat Purdue and lose to Villanova and in the third place game than lose to Purdue and beat two mid-majors. Now, with Wednesday’s quality win checked off the list and the strength-of-schedule boost from facing Villanova added to it, Tennessee gets one more chance to improve their standing in facing NC State.
Last year NC State went 11-2 in non-conference play, then 4-14 in ACC play. Thus ended Mark Gottfried’s time in Raleigh: six years and a pair of Sweet 16’s in the first four, but sub-.500 seasons the last two years. Kevin Keatts is in after three years at UNC-Wilmington and three CAA titles.
Also new is graduate transfer Allerik Freeman, a two-year starter at Baylor. The 6’3″ guard was a 38.9% three-point shooter last year, and is an instant impact scorer for the Wolfpack this season with 16.2 points per game despite shooting just 26.7% from the arc so far. He had 24 in their upset of Arizona in the first round. NC State is 5-1 and 89th in KenPom.
Tennessee played a 40 minute slugfest with Purdue to get it to overtime, then beat the Boilermakers at a much faster pace to win the extra five minutes. Against Villanova the Vols scored 46 points in the first half. Tennessee’s early returns suggest a team capable of winning a number of different ways.
Today we’ll see how they handle a faster tempo. NC State is 57th on this young season in pace of play, and averages 85.1 points per game. Northern Iowa didn’t slow them down so much as play good defense: in their 64-60 win yesterday, the Wolfpack shot just 33.8% from the floor, 8-of-30 (26.7%) from the arc, and 8-of-13 (61.5%) from the line. It has to feel like a game they should have won from NC State’s perspective.
Take away a couple of bad stretches against Villanova – which will happen against one of the very best teams in the nation – and the Vols have played really good basketball on both ends of the floor. Turnovers led to a flurry of transition buckets for the Wildcats; Tennessee hasn’t been great in transition defense, but the Vols are also getting enough offense (and emphasizing offensive rebound enough) to not find themselves on their heels very often. We’ll see how that plays itself out at a faster pace today.
But two very good signs early for the Vols: one, Tennessee is shooting 40% from the arc on this young season. It may never be a strength for this team, but they shot in the low 30’s last season. If a performance like 6-of-20 against Villanova can be the basement instead of the average, the Vols are going to win a lot more games this year. Lamonte Turner is 8-of-20 and Jordan Bowden 8-of-15, and they’re both getting much better looks than they saw last year due to better work inside from Grant Williams as well as John Fulkerson and Kyle Alexander.
Two, the Vols have generally played good defense. Purdue shot 37.3% against Tennessee. Villanova’s transition game fueled a stellar second half; the Wildcats finished at 46% from the floor. The Vols have also been hurt by really strong free throw shooting from the other side: Purdue and Villanova went 54-of-62 (87.1%). That’s not going to show up every night.
How well Tennessee defends today will go a long way to determining how successful this weekend can ultimately be. The resume will be better than it was pre-Bahamas either way, and as long as Purdue gets their act together the Vols have a resume win. But going home 4-1 with a near miss against Villanova and two power conference wins would be a big step forward for this program.
Tennessee’s last day in Atlantis tips off at 2:30 PM ET on ESPN2. Go Vols.
Tennessee was in control for a portion of its game against the Villanova Wildcats this afternoon in the Bahamas and in the hunt for most of it, but it was lost for a short period to begin the second half and that was all it took to eventually lose 85-76.
The Vols led by 15 at one point and went to the locker room at the half up by 12, but Villanova came out on fire, erased the Vols’ lead and then built one of their own that they held the rest of the way. Tennessee did make a game of it late, climbing to within three points with less than a minute remaining, but with time running out, they had to foul, and Nova doesn’t miss free throws.
Grant Williams once again led the Vols with 20 points and eight rebounds. Admiral Schofield added 16 points, and James Daniel III had 10.
It was a disappointing finish, but the Vols have now proven that they can play with anyone, and it will be interesting to see how the rest of the season shakes out.
The Vols get NC State tomorrow at 2:30, and the game will be televised on ESPN2.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.
Coming off a big win against No. 18 Purdue yesterday, Tennessee basketball now gets a shot at No. 5 Villanova. The game tips at 12:30 ET and will be televised on ESPN.
If you’re still catching up, check out our recap of the Purdue game and our preview of Villanova.
Go Vols.
There are so many things wrong with the Jauan Jennings news that I don’t even know where to start. In case you haven’t heard yet, the news is this: Jennings posted an R-rated (for language) video to Instagram, the sanitized gist of which was that Tennessee’s coaches were liars, and he was going home. Shortly thereafter, interim head coach Brady Hoke announced that Jennings had been dismissed from the team.
First, if you are late to the party, you might have some trouble appreciating the full context of what happened. I saw the video last night. It was a video recording of a phone that was playing the video, but after searching for about 15 minutes this morning, I can no longer find Jenning’s original video. This one from Sports Illustrated is the closest to the original that I’ve found, but it silences out all of the profanity and is incomplete to boot. A sanitized version relating that Jennings called the coaches names doesn’t really give you the full picture. If you’re going to have an opinion, you should find the full video and watch it (alone if you have kids and care about that stuff). He essentially flipped the entire coaching staff an especially angry double bird right to their faces.
But here’s something I don’t think anyone else is talking about yet. Jennings’ Instagram account is apparently private. Sure, he should have known that “private” doesn’t really mean “private” anymore, and he should have expected it to get out, but whatever media source ignored that fact and recorded their own video of the private video for the purpose of making it news probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Some non-media fan probably would have done the same thing at some point (and maybe it even started that way), and it almost certainly would have made the rounds on social media anyway, but do we really want to make public the things college athletes set up as private? This is not a criticism of all of the media reporting the news now that it’s out; it’s questioning the person who, unable to share or embed the video the usual way because of the privacy settings, decided to get around that by recording a video of Jennings’ video and making it news. And if Jennings intentionally allowed known media members into his circle of people entitled to see his private posts, well, then it’s his own fault, because then he essentially said those things right to the media. Regardless, we’re probably talking about this eventually no matter what, but I really don’t like the idea of sharing the actual video publicly unless public sharing was enabled.
Third, I was as shocked as everyone else that the school’s response was to dismiss Jennings from the team. How can an interim coach who’s only technically in charge for one more game of a dying season have the authority to make such a quick and drastic decision impacting the future of the program? It does certainly seem that the most cautious and prudent way out of the mess would have been to instead suspend Jennings indefinitely and wait for the program to settle.
I do think that that is true, but I also feel the need to clarify the narrative a bit. The shorthand for the story is that the interim coach dismissed a star player. That’s partially true but also incomplete. Brady Hoke probably doesn’t actually have the authority to make that call by himself, and he says that he didn’t. Athletic director John Currie was involved as well.
So, Currie probably had the actual authority and the final say. But why such a quick decision under the unique circumstances? Currie showed great patience in making the decision to fire Butch Jones, so why such a quick trigger here? So Jennings has some negative feelings about the coaching staff. Isn’t this the same staff that Currie felt so bad about that he fired them? (Yes, I know only Jones is actually gone right now. But most of the rest are going as well.)
Sure, Jennings didn’t express his message very well at all and shouldn’t have done it on social media, and maybe Currie felt that there was just no going back after that. You can’t stick the double birds in your employer’s face and just expect to go back to your desk when you feel like it. I’d bet that most acting head coaches would have dismissed an active player who did the same thing. It’s not irrational to believe that a player who has done that will never be able to play for the staff he so disrespected again.
But that’s the thing, none of these players are ever going to play for this staff again, not at Tennessee. He criticized, in his own unique way, the outgoing coaching staff, not the one he was playing for. So why not leave the question to the next coach?
Maybe Currie already knows who he’s going to hire. Maybe he consulted privately with that guy or knows what that guy’s decision on Jennings would be, and maybe he wanted to save him the trouble of having to burn some goodwill early by making that hard decision himself.
I don’t know. You don’t know. The whole thing is a terrible mess.
What’s worse, this should have been a time to push the reset button on the program, to purge most of the angst boiling over in the fan base. Who doesn’t love an interim coach? If he wins, cool. If he loses, it’s on the prior coach. And the athletic director had curried some favor with the fan base for making a move on Jones and had been positioned to make them very, very happy with the next hire.
But suddenly, things have soured again. It’s rare that an interim feels the heat of an angry fan base, but Hoke seems to have accomplished that, and Currie has just done considerable damage to any confidence the fan base may have had in him.
We don’t know all of the details. Perhaps Hoke and Currie actually made the right decision based on information that they have but we don’t.
Everything can be fixed by the right hire.
But people are nervous, and this didn’t help.
I tweeted after the win over Purdue that it was Tennessee’s most valuable victory since Cuonzo Martin’s tenure. To be clear, Rick Barnes and Donnie Tyndall both won games that were big in the moment; any victory over Kentucky is better than beating Purdue on a neutral floor. But in terms of the difference it can make in Tennessee’s season, this is the most valuable win since Tennessee’s run to the 2014 Sweet 16.
We use RPI Wizard a lot on this site; you can use their up-to-the-minute RPI plus Jeff Sagarin’s power ratings to project an end-of-year RPI, plus change any game to a win or loss to see how it might affect the outcome. It’s way too early to worry about overall RPI or any fluid ratings; Sagarin projected the Vols to be around .500 before today, which will certainly change. But even keeping those early projections, it is interesting to note the projected difference in the final RPI based on different outcomes in the Bahamas:
It was better for Tennessee to win today and lose the next two games than lose to Purdue and beat two lesser foes. But even if the Vols fall to Villanova and win the third place game (assuming #2 Arizona is in the finals from the other side of the bracket), the win over Purdue would ultimately create an opportunity to be 15-20 spots better in RPI by March.
There are plenty of what-ifs when you play overtime, and both teams would prefer not to turn the ball over a combined 33 times. But the Vols survived Purdue going 21-of-25 at the free throw line (while Tennessee was only 11-of-12) by grabbing a staggering 20 offensive rebounds. Nine of those came from Grant Williams and Kyle Alexander against Purdue’s tall trees.
Last year the Vols would have needed to be the team shooting 25 free throws to win a game like this. We said in our season preview Tennessee needed better offense to get better shots, because the Vols struggled to win ugly last year. In their first meaningful contest today, ugly was beautiful:
And they did this against #18 Purdue, a team with legitimate Final Four aspirations coming in; the Boilermakers were 11th in KenPom coming into today.
Up next: Villanova, the number one team in the nation in KenPom coming into today.
If Purdue tested Tennessee’s readiness, Villanova will test their ceiling. The 2016 champs were 31-3 last year heading back to the tournament, but were stunned by Wisconsin 65-62 in the second round. They lost first round draft pick Josh Hart and title hero Kris Jenkins, but the rest of their crew is back.
How do you go 31-3? Last year Nova was eighth nationally in field goal percentage, second in two-point percentage, and third in free throw percentage. Then they defended without fouling, allowing just 445 free throws in 36 games (12.3 per game), the second fewest in the nation despite playing extra tournament games.
The primary test with Purdue was inside, but the opposite will be true with the Wildcats. Guards Mikal Bridges, Jalen Brunson, and Donte DiVincenzo lead the way; those three combined for 49 of their 66 points in an eight-point win over Western Kentucky. 6’9″ Eric Paschall is also a threat. And the defending without fouling thing held up again: WKU attempted four free throws, ensuring a loss despite shooting 7-of-11 from the arc.
Take away a scoreless minute from Yves Pones, and the Vols played a 10-man rotation against Purdue. Six players did the heavy lifting, all of them veterans: the starting five of Bone, Bowden, Schofield, Williams, and Alexander all played 26-34 minutes, and Lamonte Turner added 33 off the bench while scoring 17 points. But we saw both Schofield (team-high 34 minutes) and Bone get banged up late; Schofield returned from a shoulder scare while Bone’s ankle kept him off the floor late, and it’ll be interesting to see how ready they are 24 hours later.
Turner and Williams will get the praise, but the biggest deal today was Kyle Alexander: 13 points and 11 rebounds while dealing with two seven footers from Purdue. He had two critical buckets in overtime, one of them a three. We’ll need to see more of that before we can expect it, but if Alexander can help Tennessee win big games down the stretch? That’s a big difference between last year and this one.
Purdue was a gatekeeper game; now that the Vols are through they’ll reap the strength-of-schedule benefits in a pure opportunity test against Villanova. Another golden opportunity would presumably await against #2 Arizona if Tennessee wins…but if Tennessee beats Purdue and Villanova on consecutive days, I’m not sure the bubble is the most relevant conversation. The Vols got their quality win and have given themselves a chance to make a serious upgrade in their resume with another win on Friday. Or they could beat Villanova, and we’ll start talking about loftier things.
It’s been a long autumn around here. Today was excellent. Let’s do that again.
Go Vols.
Well that was refreshing. Tennessee basketball, picked 13th in the SEC preseason poll, just beat No. 18 Purdue 78-75 in overtime. Grant Williams led the way with 22 points and 8 rebounds.
For most of the first half, Tennessee really struggled with the height of Purdue, which rotates in two guys who are 7’2″ and 7’3″. They found some room to shoot, but it wasn’t enough to get off their regular shot, as most attempts had to be adjusted to avoid the tree limbs. Eventually, though, excellent ball movement, good shot selection, and great offensive rebounding helped them find their groove, and they tied the game with an emphatic dunk just before heading into the locker room for halftime.
The Vols began the second half the same way, extending their lead to 7 before the Boilermakers began to climb back. At the eleven minute mark, the teams began trading the lead as the Vols again began having trouble finding comfortable shots.
With 18 seconds left, Purdue led by 3 and had the ball, but the Vols’ Lamonte Turner, who’d gotten hot earlier in the game but had cooled a bit by this time, dribbled around the arc using Grant Williams as a shield, found some space, and hit a three-pointer to tie the game with 5 seconds left. Purdue missed a three-point attempt of its own, and the game went to overtime.
The Boilermakers raced out to a quick 5-point lead early in the overtime period until Grant Williams decided he’d had enough.
With 2:24 to go, Admiral Schofield missed a three-pointer, but Williams got the board, missed his own put back, got it back again, and put it down. On the next three Vols possessions, Williams hit a jumper, had an impressive assist out of a double team to Kyle Alexander for a dunk, and hit another jumper to take the lead 76-75. When Purdue fouled, James Daniel III hit both free throws, and the Vols held on from there.
Unless you saw the game, you can’t really appreciate how much bigger Purdue’s players were than Tennessee’s, and it’s not like they’re just tall, either. They can play. And yet, Tennessee out-hustled, out-played, and yes, even out-rebounded an incredibly tall and really, really good basketball team.
The jury was still out on the Vols after two dominating wins over lower-level competition to start the season, but no more. Now, Tennessee’s put everyone on notice that they are not the 13th-best team in the SEC. Nowhere near it. They’re good, they’re going to make some real noise this season, and they’re going to be fun to watch.
Next up: Western Kentucky or No. 5 Villanova tomorrow at either 12:30 or 7:00.
Go Vols.
