In college basketball, one of my favorite things is being able to visit sites like KenPom and Torvik shortly after a game ends to see how it impacted the big picture: new projected records, was this win really as good as we thought it was, etc.
It looks like ESPN is leaning into that with FPI, which already shows the biggest change that happened to Tennessee yesterday.
It didn’t necessarily take place in Atlanta, where the Vols were favored by two touchdowns and won by 19. The good was what you wanted to see, particularly with Joey Aguilar. That leads to the natural follow-up of, “Now let’s see him do it against SEC defenses.”
Tennessee, one of if not the best SEC defense last year, played much of the second half deeeeeeeep into the depth chart at corner and defensive tackle. I liked what we saw up front when everyone was accounted for. On the back end, we have no idea when we might even see everyone accounted for; here’s hoping for good news on the injury front with Rickey Gibson (and hello, Ty Redmond).
Georgia comes to town in two weeks, and now it feels like that one carries even more anticipation. And that too might have less to do with anything that happened anywhere in the state of Georgia yesterday.
In the advanced stats and big picture conversations, the most interesting thing that happened to Tennessee yesterday happened to Alabama.
The Tide plummeted ten spots in FPI after their loss to Florida State; in that metric, Alabama would now be a three-point underdog to Tennessee on a neutral field. Meanwhile, Tennessee’s schedule – on paper – continues to look beneficial. In long ago friend of the blog SEC Mike’s power rankings, Tennessee (4th) plays Georgia (3rd)…and our other seven games are against the bottom seven teams, plus or minus what happens to South Carolina today.
FPI gives Tennessee a 50/50 chance to make the playoffs with 9.5 projected wins, with some portion of that equation including the “Who’s going to make the SEC title game?” conversation. We’ll see what happens with the rest of Tennessee’s schedule; Florida (South Florida) and Oklahoma (Michigan) have interesting matchups next. And hey, in Tuscaloosa they’ll continue to leave the altar open, we’ll see what happens there too.
Look, it’s probably way too early for both, but data is more valuable than narratives at this point. FPI is also updating strength of record and game control metrics now, and Tennessee is scoring high marks there so far. But there is a version of this now where Georgia is a significantly more valuable opportunity than anything else on Tennessee’s schedule. And if that’s the case – or even if it’s not – it’s a big, big Saturday coming up in Knoxville.
Go Vols.