Are this season's Vols better than the 2023-24 team?

[sami]

My biggest worry for SEC teams, is they are all going through a gauntlet regular season. Then they face almost a fifth of the 68 NCAA field in the SEC tournament weekend before the big dance. The SEC may just cut the legs off of their own teams run by self destruction.

Truth. Just like football, the conference is so good top to bottom that it is cannibalizing itself and hurting its chances when the national tournaments start. Meanwhile, the Dukes and Purdues, like Indiana and Penn State in football, play cupcake schedules against mediocre league competition and will have top seeds come NCAA time.

The SEC tournament is a complete waste of time, but like the SECCG in football, will never go away due to revenue. Just call the team that survived the gauntlet in the regular season the champ and be done with it. But $$$$$$$$$$ rules all.

 

[kckempf]

Truth. Just like football, the conference is so good top to bottom that it is cannibalizing itself and hurting its chances when the national tournaments start. Meanwhile, the Dukes and Purdues, like Indiana and Penn State in football, play cupcake schedules against mediocre league competition and will have top seeds come NCAA time.

The SEC tournament is a complete waste of time, but like the SECCG in football, will never go away due to revenue. Just call the team that survived the gauntlet in the regular season the champ and be done with it. But $$$$$$$$$$ rules all.

Purdue isn’t playing a cupcake schedule. 10 Big Ten schools are projected into the tournament. They had one of the toughest non conference schedules, too, beating Alabama and Mississippi and losing to Texas A&M and Auburn. Kenpom has their schedule as stronger than ours thus far, even, though we will probably catch up with 10 or so SEC games to go.

 

[Anti-shunshinepumper]

Rebuttal to what, exactly? Responding to idiotic gifs by the usual suspects who love to pile on after any loss is pointless. If someone had come on and made an actual point and an argument why they disagreed with the thread premise (you know, an actual discussion?), you would be correct that no response would have been telling.

The 'trolls' are the people with no actual point to make other than things like convenient gifs and snide remarks in lieu of actual conversation.

I guess the same type thing you posting now.
You do understand how irrational ( and frankly petty) you sound when you say there was no point in responding to a couple of gifs, but then come back weeks later with the benefit of hindsight and make a long rant responding to said gifs, right?

Looks I get it, we're all happy we've been playing better the last 3 games, but this is NOT how this team was playing when those gifs (saying no) were made/weeks ago. We now have NEW data to go on in regards to this thread.

3 weeks ago you could NOT say things like Dubar was "finding his place/ getting more confident game by game."
You could NOT say Igor was allowing us to play the stretch 4 like you are now touting. The stretch 4 depends on a 4 position that can consistently hit the 3-pointer. Igor had NOT been doing that.
Chaz was NOT taking advantages of screens or cuts to the basket/ " showing an ability to take it to the rac". This was NOT the case 3 weeks ago.
This team as a whole was NOT doing what they needed to do to be successful on offense.
Besides maybe Okapara, EVERYONE had been underperforming in SEC play. They were NOT making the same effort to get to the basket/in the paint/finish at the rim as they have been the last 3 games.
Pretending everything I said was NOT the case a few weeks ago is wilfully naive at best, and dishonest at worst.

Incidentally,
The premise of the thread is/was NOT
" a question - could they be better? ", as you stated.
This is patently false.
It is/was specifically, " ARE this season's Vols better than the 2023-24 team"?
This question was posed at a specific point in time.
Opinions can and will obviously change as the season unfolds, and like I told you, will vary depending on your criteria for 'better'.

 

[sami]

I guess the same type thing you posting now.
You do understand how irrational ( and frankly petty) you sound when you say there was no point in responding to a couple of gifs, but then come back weeks later with the benefit of hindsight and make a long rant responding to said gifs, right?

Looks I get it, we're all happy we've been playing better the last 3 games, but this is NOT how this team was playing when those gifs (saying no) were made/weeks ago. We now have NEW data to go on in regards to this thread.

3 weeks ago you could NOT say things like Dubar was "finding his place/ getting more confident game by game."
You could NOT say Igor was allowing us to play the stretch 4 like you are now touting. The stretch 4 depends on a 4 position that can consistently hit the 3-pointer. Igor had NOT been doing that.
Chaz was NOT taking advantages of screens or cuts to the basket/ " showing an ability to take it to the rac". This was NOT the case 3 weeks ago.
This team as a whole was NOT doing what they needed to do to be successful on offense.
Besides maybe Okapara, EVERYONE had been underperforming in SEC play. They were NOT making the same effort to get to the basket/in the paint/finish at the rim as they have been the last 3 games.
Pretending everything I said was NOT the case a few weeks ago is wilfully naive at best, and dishonest at worst.

Incidentally,
The premise of the thread is/was NOT
" a question - could they be better? ", as you stated.
This is patently false.
It is/was specifically, " ARE this season's Vols better than the 2023-24 team"?
This question was posed at a specific point in time.
Opinions can and will obviously change as the season unfolds, and like I told you, will vary depending on your criteria for 'better'.

The premise was always what this team could be, and that this was a work in progress The first line of the OP, not quite the declarative statement you want to make it out to be:

In my opinion they certainly can be, and here are my reasons and caveats:

You clearly live to instigate and argue, I hope for the sake of whoever you might live with that you aren't like this in real life. Honestly, you should go back to stupid gifs, they aren't as exhausting. Have a nice day.

 

[Anti-shunshinepumper]

The premise was always what this team could be, and that this was a work in progress The first line of the OP, not quite the declarative statement you want to make it out to be:

In my opinion they certainly can be, and here are my reasons and caveats:

You clearly live to instigate and argue, I hope for the sake of whoever you might live with that you aren't like this in real life. Honestly, you should go back to stupid gifs, they aren't as exhausting. Have a nice day.

lol I like how you addressed nothing I said, but the "incidentally/by the way" last part of my post (nice dodge, btw)
The funny thing is when I responded to you I was charitable and responded as if you intended to say "could this team be?".
I merely pointed that out to you so you would understand why you got the gifs and a posts like the very first one you got in this thread:

" I think it's best to wait until seasons end and compare. Long way to go."

Obviously this poster assumed you were wanting a current comparison at the particular time you made the post, so it wasn't just me that figured you wanted a current assessment/comparison. Many other commenters took it this way, too. Which makes sense since you're title leaves no ambiguity.
You should have titled the post the way you now necessarily want it to be taken. That's not my fault. You should have been more clear.

This is all strawman anyways. You intention in regard has absolutely nothing to do with what I have since said about this team, and it certainly doesn't negate any of my solid points.

The way our team was playing 3 weeks ago, they certainly were not better than last year's team.
Moreover, the gifs signaling this were perfectly fine. After the team has now turned the corner on offense, with the help of hindsight you decided to bump your own thread up so you could take some childish swipes at what you thought were some "stupid gifs".
You got all in your feelings, and now at the end of it you're projecting your emotional baggage on me with weak attempt at gaslighting.


What you need to do is go back and red my intial reply ro after you bumped your thread. Read it again and you will see I was in no way trying to "instigate or argue". I was actually very positive about the team.
All the rest of our back and forth came AFTER and as a result of you not being able to handle a very sensible critique.
You're attempt at playing internet psychologist is way off base, dude.
You need to go touch some grass, and try not let people's opinionated responses get you so flustered.

 

[Anti-shunshinepumper]

To be fair, when those comments were made this team did not look better than last year's team.
Have they legitly turned the corner on offense with this new found approach of making it a priority to go to the basket?
Damn I hope so, because if they have we might just be better than last year's team.
Most notably to me is at the 5 position.
Felix is doing so much for us I'm not sure a lot of fans actually realize it.

^ This was my intial reply to you yesterday.
I honestly can't believe your reaction to it has lead to all our back and forth. smh

 

[sami]

Well, to revisit this thread from early January, what does everyone think right now?

To me, this year's Vols were a more complete, if not as deep squad as last year's group. We lacked that guy in Knecht who could just take over any game, but we had more of a 'by committee' group where any one of ZZ, Chaz, or Gainey could be the guy on any given night.

Igor didn't improve over the course of the season as much as we might have liked with regard to consistency, but showed the importance of a stretch 4 in the Barnes system.

The defense might have even taken a step up, with Chaz improving dramatically over the course of the season, and Felix (and Cade!) providing rim protection and toughness that just wasn't there with Aidoo. The lack of a post scorer did hurt at the worst possible time on Sunday.

Gainey took a huge step forward and provided that reliable third scorer that was missing for the most part last year, and also improved tremendously on the defensive end. Unfortunately, D-Stone got off on the wrong foot due to personal issues, and while he made a few big plays and was a factor in the Kentucky win, wasn't what we were hoping for based on his Hofstra production.

We got to the same spot and were one of the best teams in the country all season both years, so in many ways it's a wash, with both teams providing incredible moments and memories we'll look back on years from now.

I'm going to call it a draw, with maybe the slightest edge going to this year's group due to the improvement in the SEC conference making it a tougher road.