December 19, 2009
February 9, 2010
March 13, 2010
You probably don’t remember all those dates, and that’s fine. That’s why I’m here. Those dates are the Volunteers losses to USC, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky respectively. They lost by a total of 70, an average of 23.3 points per game. At some point during the season, almost every Vol fan said after one of those games “There is no way this team will do any sort of damage in March.” That didn’t turn out to be the case, and after the Elite Eight run, everybody in Rocky Top was happy about the basketball program. However, did we overlook the basketball part of the program because of the Elite Eight run?
I thought about this after the Florida game this Saturday. Yes, we lost three senior starters, and that hurt some. Still, Tennessee returned seven of their top ten players, added three top 50 recruits, and a solid center in John Fields. Talent/experience isn’t the problem. So why has the team digressed so much? Quite frankly, it’s a few things.
1. There is zero player development.
Other than Scotty Hopson and Brian Williams, nobody has improved a considerable amount. And Brian Williams had nowhere to go but up. Cam Tatum has improved zero since his freshman year. Melvin Goins is still terribly inefficient offensively. Skylar McBee is shooting worse than last year. And if you look back at previous players, you’ll see there wasn’t any consistent improvement. Ramar Smith got worse. Tyler Smith became worse. Chism didn’t resemble a consistent game till the New Year’s incident. J.P. Prince was infuriating his whole career. Duke Crews never showed a post game (his heart problems didn’t help). Who truly improved year by year that was a Pearl recruit? Scotty Hopson? It seems players cannot max out their potential under Pearl.
2. The offense has to go…like now.
It doesn’t matter what offense you run. If it is taught correctly and the players run it correctly, almost every offense will work. Neither of those things are happening at Tennessee. When Chris Lofton/Dane Bradshaw/JaJuan Smith was on the team, you could count on three or four backdoor cuts for easy baskets every game. The last few years have been totally different. I honestly can’t remember one successful backdoor cut for an easy basket this year. It is absolutely preposterous with a good passer like Tobias Harris at the forward position that we can’t run successful cuts. The wings go 75% in their cuts, and that won’t “cut” it. You have to run it right. The Volunteers don’t run an offense, they jog an offense. But don’t just blame the wings. The big men set terrible ball screens on the baseline. And Pearl is not designing good offensive plays. You cannot waste twenty plus seconds off the clock, then run an isolation play or a pick-n-roll. It limits your offense way too much to be consistently effective, and we don’t a ball handler/post player that can run very good pick-n-rolls. They don’t run double ball screens like they did with Lofton and JaJuan Smith. They struggle to get isolation for the posts, and they don’t space the floor properly when the post doubles. The offense is truly a mess.
3. Quite simply, Pearl can’t recruit a point guard.
Ramar Smith wasn’t a point guard. Marques Johnson wasn’t a basketball player. Bobby Maze was too inconsistent. Melvin Goins is one of the most inefficient offensive point guards in a while. Trae Golden is a combo guard, not a true point guard. Pearl has been a solid recruiter rankings wise, but for whatever reason he has not been able to sign a point guard who can play consistent basketball. Aaron Craft/Josh Shelby was supposed to fix that, but for whatever reason, they didn’t sign here. And that has severely hurt this team. Goins is a very solid defensive player, but offensively he can do very little. Other than hit the open three, he doesn’t do anything well offensively. He doesn’t penetrate and dish, he doesn’t play pick-n-roll offense effectively, and he can’t set the offense up properly half the time. And while I like Golden’s potential, he has a ways to go to become a successful point guard. Basketball wise, the point guard spot has been the wart of the Pearl era.
4. This team can’t play consistent defense.
Remember watching the Villanova/Pitt games this year? Remember shutting everyone down except Evan Turner last year in the Sweet Sixteen? The team (defensively) was absolutely sound. Now, remember the 2009 tourney game against Oklahoma State? How about the 2008 Sweet Sixteen? The College of Charleston game two months ago? Since we have transitioned from the “Control Chaos” press after Pearl’s third year, we can’t play consistent defense. The team can’t hang their hat on being a defensive team, because they don’t show the want to play great defense on a dependable basis.
5. There is no identity, from the head coach to the players.
What kind of team are we? Do we hang our hat on suffocating defense? Are we a run and gun team? Are we a grinded it out, half-court basketball team? What do we want from our offense, lots of post ups, good three point shooting, or driving to the basket? There is nothing that makes me say “Now that is Tennessee basketball!” We have nothing to go to when the going gets tough. We don’t even know who our go-to player is! The team is in disarray and has nothing to go back to. When Pearl’s team first struggled, they brought more urgency to the press and said “You may beat it, but this is what we do, and we aren’t going to back down.” This team has nothing like that. And that’s on the coach. At the beginning of each year, you sit your team down and say “We are going to X and we are going to do that every game. No matter what happens, that is what this team is about.” It’s not like with this team. When you have no identity, you panic in tough times. That’s why we struggle so much in late game situations. We have nothing to go to, and when that happens the players don’t trust what is called. It’s why we have seen so many different plays in the last few seconds of games. There is nothing consistent.
Yes, this was pessimistic. Basketball wise, it isn’t the end of the Pearl era. It’s a bad season, yes, but he rallied the team last year. The issues mentioned above have been prevalent for almost three seasons now. Can Pearl fix the problems and make Tennessee an elite basketball program? If the problems cannot be fixed, this program will not reach the heights that seemed possible just a few short years ago.
7 responses to “State of the Program: What’s wrong?”
They look like backyard players when the game is on the line. Saturday was a shameful way to end a game. Hurry football season – Vol BB is self-destructing.
GO VOLS!!
Great points. I have to agree. It pains me that since our
Final 8 run last year. We just missed the final 4. Missed free
throws poor decisions & poor defense. It has bled into poor
offense this year. They have gotten worse. Instead of better.
I believe that you made very valuable points.
Excellent write-up. In addition to player development …. or lack thereof … I continue to be astounded at our lack of improvement on free throw shooting. An individual player (think Wilt Chamberlain) can be consistently bad despite good coaching. When an entire team fails to improve it raises questions. With decent free throw shooting ( for a high school), we would have 4-5 more wins already, even with our lack of ability to get to the line. Getting to the line, IMO, reflects greatly on point guard play, which we have not had consistently since Watson. A point guard with miniscule assist numbers who can’t generate a good look for someone at the end of a game, needs a lot of coaching or a replacement. And a fall-away 3 with 2 seconds left after frittering away 10 or 15 seconds is not a good option.
You are exactly correct. You can steal some wins with just average free throw shooting. Bama scored very few field goals in the second half and OT, but they sank the FTs and won. We didn’t. Florida had a least 20 points on FTs, when we might have had 5 to 10. Cam’s misses at the end of the game was the difference. If he makes the 1 and 1, that would at least ensure OT if they could make a 3 pointer. We have athletes who can run, dunk and leap, but can’t shoot free throws. Maybe we can sneak some cheerleaders in to shoot for us.
i dont know to much about basketball, so i am not a great person to debate you on your points, simply because i have never played the sport. I know only what i watch and hear from announcers, however, i will say this under Bruce we have been on ESPN more times in the past four years than probably the whole history of the program. Attendance has risen to an all time high for the men program, and we have 2 Mcdonald’s All-Americans, and could have three if Selby sticks to his word. as for development i cant really argue that, i would say that some of the guys might have been overrated in recruiting process. We lost over half our points per game in last years class, and our team chemistry is starting over. Not to mention the off the court issues, which yes are entirely on Bruce, arent helping this team at all. I personally feel that for the first time in as long as i can remember Tennessee Mens Basketball is on the verge of being an Elite Program, and is a team nobody wants to play in the tournament. We as Vol fans dont need to jump to fast decisions, we all know how stability in a program is very important, and personally i feel we have one of the ten to fifteen best coaches in all of college basketball.
Spot on analysis. Pudden is right though. Pearl is a good sales man. He is high energy and he has brought the program up a notch or two. His off the court antics i.e. cheating on his wife, cheating the NCAA and lying about both, have turned up on the court. There is the feeling that his team has lost some respect for him as a person. I think he has gone the way of others is the sense that now he is at a big time school, making millions, and now he is comfortable. The offense is pathetic and inconsistent at best. Scotty is more concerned about looking pretty than he is about dominating the game. It all looks like a Jerry Green re-run. Loads of talent and the inability to coach it.
“J.P. Prince was infuriating his whole career.”
Amen. I miss that sucker though.