big game coming up on wednesday for the vols at home against auburn:
a win would certainly help their case for a 1 seed. auburn is the deepest team in the country, their bench is basically as good as their starting five. really interesting team output together by pearl.
Barnes a really good job with this tennessee team. it’s not his most talented team ever at tennessee, but it’s his best overall team. dalton knecht is a bona fide 1st team all american who will be a lottery pick this summer. what a find he’s been. my favorite player to watch in cbb, along with rob dillingham. should be a good game.
#7 offense and #9 defense in conference play. defensive metrics are really bad. our drastic fall off in defensive performance and statistics which immediately coincided with RT’s replacing of beard should have been a crystal clear sign that this would be a weakness. that defense went from a swarming, ferocious defense to “merely” being really good defense overnight.
that was a talented, senior laden, well drilled team of chris beard’s players. those boys played some inspired D during their postseason run, but outside of that 5-6 game stretch of great D (particularly great perimeter D) our defense has been ineffectual and uninspired under RT (particularly our perimeter D). he needs to bring in someone to design and implement a successful defense next year or he’ll be gone.
i just keep praying he goes the cedric daniels route and gets talked into “stepping down for family/health reasons”.’
do i think this will happen? no. is it possible this will happen? also no. fuck we are so screwed.
something else i’ve read/watched videos on re: kai havertz is that he has a very high iq and that he manipulates space well. he sees the open space and either fills it or gets the ball there, as well as using his own movement to open up space for other players. since reading about this i’ve been looking out for it and i’m seeing it in recent epl games. i really think he was a smart signing. really good game from him so far.
my old HS asst coach was a huge piece of shit who spent way more time hitting on freshman girls than he ever did coaching. hes short, he’s fat, and i don’t think he ever played basketball in his life. he's also a very loud, angry man. naturally he got promoted to HC when mike murphy retired like a decade ago. pretty sure the promoted assistant (David “they shouldn’t allow me around children” Raigosa) has about a .300 win % since taking over from mike murphy who used to go 13-1 every year in one of the tougher districts in Texas at the time. that’s pflugerville though- once you’re hired you pretty much have to slug a kid to lose your job, and even then it depends on which kid it is.
there’s probably nobody here i’d beat at 1 on 1, even in my “prime”, but when it comes to dropping dimes, being slow, and fouling out, ain’t none of y’all got shit on me.