[Post Game Thread] 8 Tennessee loses to 12 Kentucky 78-73
I’m going to take my time to post this because I want to be deliberate and clear in my thoughts. But here’s what I have right now - this team sold out any interior presence to build a team around shooting 3s, and their two best three point shooters have been downright bad in conference play. The offense has stalled - and this team looks more and more like 2022 every game. The worst part? If they were an average offense in conference play they’d be undefeated. But they’re not average. Right now it’s a bad offense, and no matter how good your defense is, if you can’t put the ball in the basket, you can’t win games. Is it a coaching philosophy? Maybe. Is it that some of these guys aren’t as good as we initially thought, myself included? Maybe. All I know is this isn’t a trend. They’re 21 games in - this is who they are. They’re a team that will likely end up on a the 3-4 line and if they get cold can get bounced in the first day of the tournament. If they get hot, they could maybe make the Elite Eight. I hope I’m proven wrong. I hope the play picks up. But at this point, I don’t know. Here we go.
The Good:
Igor Milicic played his best game in about 4 weeks. Shot really efficiently. Drove to the basket at times, hit threes, rebounded at a fine clip. Really nothing else you can ask of him. The foul on Brea hurt, but they’ve fouled a 3pt shooter every conference game so far (they did it twice against Illinois). And I think that’s on coaching.
Rebounding was actually really good. Thank god they can rebound because they miss a ton of fucking shots.
They only had 5 turnovers. Problem is they all seemed to happen in huge moments lol.
The Average:
Jahmai Mashack. Defensively he was probably their best player. The problem is that they didn’t play very good defense today so that wasn’t a really high bar.
Felix Okpara. He was fine. Bad in the low post, above average on defense. His lack of post moves hurts the offense in a game like this, but whatever.
Free throw shooting was fine. They didn’t do a great job at getting to the line at all tho.
The Bad:
Jordan Gainey’s second half of basketball is one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. And that’s saying something. It’s one thing to miss shots, it’s another to just dribble the ball off your foot or throw it away in timely moments. Couple that with bad shooting and it just wasn’t pretty.
ZZ. His efficiency has been bad all year but god damn he hurt the team today. 11 threes, all of them good looks, and he missed 10 of them. That’s so, so bad.
Chaz Lanier. Gotta say, I liked him more in non-con play. His disappearing act is simply too much for the team to overcome. Kobe Brea, right now, is a better Chaz Lanier than Chaz Lanier. If Chaz plays like non-con Chaz (48% from the field and 47% from 3) they win this game (and 3 others too). It sucks. I hate it. It fucking sucks.
Darlinstone Dubar. I like that he was given a leash today but he just proceeded to miss all his shots. That’s okay, almost everyone else did too.
Shooting. Over the last month this team found countless ways to miss shots. And the misses aren’t close. It’s like they shot pregame with weights on their wrists. It’s like they catapult the ball. It’s like they’ve never shot before.
Fouling 3pt shooters. The fuck is happening here? Why? WHY?
Rick Barnes. Rick Barnes built this team and they can’t score when it matters. And the recruits don’t look promising. And why didn’t he call a timeout down 3 when they clearly had nothing going? What was he thinking? I don’t fucking know.
This team makes me sad. And I hate being sad.
Go Birds.