I sat and stared at my laptop for a while after the postgame press conference just trying to figure out how to detail this loss. Lack of frontcourt production and presence was jarring. Decision-making from the guards was head-scratching. Arkansas made a season-low 10 two-point field goals. All-around rough night.
You summed it all up quite well. A head scratching stinker for sure. Especially this late in the season. Just an awful performance all around…
At this point in the season & after our recent struggles, expected this team to be highly motivated & ready for this & the Bama games. Had hoped the return of Nick Smith would be a catalyst to get us through the SEC & NCAA tournaments. Do we not have the talent or team chemistry, or is the game preparation & motivation not adequate?
The interior toughness piece was most alarming last night. Arkansas’ bigs were shells of themselves compared to other games against teams with solid forwards. Offensively, turnovers were an issue, and Tennessee is really good defensively at tying one arm behind your back. The Vols choked off the dribble-drive and were more than happy with Arkansas taking jumpers.
I’m so glad you posted this. I posted just a couple times in the game thread. Both posts were about how inept our bigs were. They almost looked disinterested in the game. Yes, TN has very good bigs with a lot of fight and desire. Our Bigs just wilted against their fight and desire.
There’s no doubt that TN’s interior players are more talented than ours, and it’s not close. In the big games we’ve won, our front court played with more fight and effort than our opponent’s. Last night TN’s front court bullied us and we just backed off and took it without fighting back??
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Agree. Our bigs were simply a “no show” last night. I’m not sure why they even bothered to get on the plane to Knoxville. Having said that, I believe our recent problems on defense go beyond our bigs. Our guards are really struggling to fight through screens and keep their man in front of them leading to too many layups or passes to bigs deep in the paint. Bama and the Vols really took it to us in that regard – as Scottie said, a combined 94 points in the paint. The Bama game in particular seemed at times to simply be a parade of layups for our opponent.
I’m just not sure we have the right personnel to continue to play man to man the whole game. I know our defensive stats are quite good but playing back to back top rated teams has exposed our weaknesses.
We got B-slapped and the Vols seemed surprised at just easy it was for them to dominate. Truly a pitiful display of college basketball on our part.
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Doesn’t bode well for the future games.
My optimism for this team slid to the floor watching the no-show last night.
It was awful. I almost never turn a game off, but I did last night. Refused to watch the last 5 minutes. We were manhandled.
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My cousin stopped through, after his dad’s service in Weiner, to watch the game with me.
Midway through the 2nd half, we switched to the Arkansas episode of “Southern Hoops.”
Our “performance” last night was alarmingly awful…especially for this time of year.
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Sorry for your loss Jeremy.
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Thank you, Danny.
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Scottie why did we not run the motion game where we got all the great passes and looks like we did a few games ago.We made it so incredibly easy to guard us by putting everyone behind the arc and having one person try to dribble drive.Tenn way to good for that to ever work.I would like to hear Muss answer to that…what do you think???
I hate to hear about your loss Jeremy…Praying for your family
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Thanks, Billy.
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It might be interesting sometime to analyze the game by age on the floor lineups. With Black, Smith and Walsh on the floor that’s three 19 year olds. Pinion, Ford and Dunning I assume are also. The Mitchell twins, Council, Graham and Davis are veterans, but I believe Tennessee may be a more veteran International team.
I think Tennessee switched a lot and its length was bothersome. Honestly, the Vols matched up far better against Arkansas after Zeigler got hurt. They became taller, longer and more versatile defensively. Arkansas tried to run its sets, obviously. Tennessee defended them well and the Razorbacks got into their open offense and wound up taking a lot of jumpers.
I don’t understand basketball as good as I do football and baseball but I have watched tons of games and it just seems to me the more you’re moving the harder it is to cover you!!because I believe you are eventually going to get picked off by somebody else who’s moving …I think it’s kind of like in football when you run a pick route the reason they run them is to get somebody open!!
Tennessee and the half court was moving very well and were getting to the basket a whole lot more than we were with that one person trying to do all the work.
We were moving unbelievably well just a few games ago and had a great success we had 260 passes!! Why did we not try to run that offense… I don’t know it just blew my mind that we just tried to beat them one-on-one all night
On offense, I’d like to see NSJ start the offense and everyone play off of him. Get the ball out of AB’s hands. Run high p-n-r with Nick, much like we did with Notae last season. Play Pinion more. Just play him a lot more minutes. Stick him in the corner, and give Nick a shooter he can pass the ball to. Pinion’s presence on the court should open driving lanes for Walsh, AB, and RC4.
I know it’s late in the season, but teach Jalen Graham proper rebounding technique and positioning, so he can be utilized more. His offensive game is too good to for him to be spending so much time on the bench.
On defense, I’d like to see us do more what teams have done to us all season, and that’s crowd the lane, and attempt to shutoff the endless dribble penetration into it. It’s what we should’ve done against Tenn, with Vescovi being their only decent 3-pt shooter. If we give up a bunch of 3s so be it; it’s still better than the non-stop layups and dunks at the rim by Tenn players last night.