2022-23 Tennessee basketball preview: six burning questions
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Every team entering this new basketball season has significant questions of varying degrees they have to answer; Tennessee is no different. This is a ripoff of MGoBlog’s 5 Questions, 5 Answers series they do for football. Apologies to Brian Cook for doing this yet again.
After research and deep care, these are the six questions I’ve felt are most worth finding an answer to before the season begins.
Who is the team’s leading scorer?
Santiago Vescovi, followed by Zakai Zeigler. I don’t think either of those selections would come as a surprise. I think on a per-minute basis, I’d actually pick Zeigler to score more points, and he’ll likely have the higher Usage Rate. That being said, I think Vescovi plays more minutes on the year and likely deals with foul trouble less often. This is also a guy who’s the best shooter from deep in the SEC. That counts for a lot.
I think Tennessee could very realistically have five guys who average double-digit points per game. In descending order: Vescovi, Zeigler, Julian Phillips, Josiah-Jordan James, and Tyreke Key. If Olivier Nkamhoua is able to become a bit more efficient offensively and play 26 minutes a night or thereabouts, he will be a threat for 10+ PPG as well.
What is Tennessee’s best five?
There’s an entire section in the preview where I make a case - one I strongly believe in - that Tennessee’s best five is Zakai Zeigler, Santiago Vescovi, Julian Phillips, Josiah-Jordan James, and Olivier Nkamhoua. Based on past performance and future projection, that’s the group I feel most confident in if the final five minutes of a big game were to unfold tomorrow. That’s three guys who made 44 or more threes last year, a fourth (Nkamhoua) who shot 45% from deep, and Phillips, who went 3-for-7 in the public scrimmage from deep before the Alabama football game.
Of course, this is where a qualifier should be announced: I doubt this is Tennessee’s starting lineup to begin the year, and it may not even be Tennessee’s most used lineup. Program insiders believe Jonas Aidoo or Uros Plavsic may close games at the five, and we went over in the preview how Tyreke Key is likely to start at point guard. (Key will also factor into game-closing lineups with his background as a three-level scorer with post-up game.) This is a question that I feel has a malleable answer.
Can Tennessee sustain its defensive excellence without Mike Schwartz?
Yes, at least for 2022-23. Tennessee lost Schwartz to East Carolina immediately after the season ended, which is a deceptively big loss for the future. It’s a good sign that Tennessee’s program is so successful that every assistant on the 2020-21 staff - a season that ended not even 20 months ago - now has a head coaching gig at a place not named Tennessee. Barnes is terrific at identifying coaching talent and has stuffed his staff with it for years now.
The 2022-23 part of this equation is simpler to answer. Tennessee’s going to remain excellent on defense unless they decided to overhaul their scheme in the offseason, which would frankly be unwise. It worked against everyone not named Michigan over the final two months of the season. Most of the key pieces from that defense are back, along with returners from injury and an important transfer in Key. The most pessimistic realistic case I can cook up for Tennessee is that they finish somewhere around 10th-15th instead of 1st-5th.
Going forward, though, is a question we’ll have to wait for an answer on. Schwartz coordinated Tennessee’s defense in a fabulous manner, and while I’ve heard Justin Gainey (and presumably the others too, but Gainey is the main one I’ve heard) is likely to follow in his footsteps, we don’t have as much data on him as we did on Schwartz. Things should be fine in the short-term; the long-term will be resolved in due time.
Does Tennessee commit to a one-big lineup for most of the season?
I lean towards yes, simply because the roster might just be designed that way. I wouldn’t be stunned to see Tennessee roll with a single-big lineup on 60% of all possessions, even if I’d personally prefer that be at 70% or better. Tennessee’s going to commit a good share of time to a Nkamhoua/Plavsic or Nkamhoua/Aidoo frontcourt at various points and we’ll simply have to deal with that, but if Nkamhoua ups his three-point attempt rate a little it won’t be all that worrisome.
The real hope here is two-fold: that Barnes doesn’t play Plavsic and Aidoo together and that a one-big (or even zero-big) lineup works as well as it did last year. Maybe Plavsic and Aidoo can make it work, but the year of data we have on Aidoo was not encouraging from a jumpers perspective. The scrimmages have made it look better, but I need real game action to feel positively towards it.
The secondary request - that the one-big or zero-big lineups are the advantage they were last year - seems less like a request and more like a “how big of an advantage are they” question. Tennessee did a terrific job down the stretch last year of picking and choosing moments where they wanted to ride smaller lineups. It wouldn’t shock me if they do the same to start the season, but my feeling is and has been this offseason that it’s going to have to be the majority of on-court minutes by February/March.
Who’s the backup big?
Uros Plavsic, at least to start the season. I’m defining “backup” not as “first big off the bench” but rather as “the guy who gets the second-most minutes at the 5” because it’s fun to hedge your bets in this way. Regardless, Plavsic is a senior who’s secretly fairly valuable on offense and did make real strides on the defensive end last year. Do I like the concept of Plavsic playing more than…I don’t know, 15 minutes a game? Not at all. But do I think Plavsic has a real role on this team and can provide some useful minutes against most opponents? Sure.
Jonas Aidoo may very well be the answer to this by season’s end though. Aidoo wasn’t a factor in the rotation at all until Nkamhoua’s injury, but once Nkamhoua went out he provided some useful minutes until falling out of the rotation by the pair of tournaments. I think Aidoo’s obviously got the higher ceiling; simultaneously, Plavsic likely has the safer floor in 2022-23. Which one of those wins out remains to be seen.
What’s Tennessee’s best offensive/defensive lineup?
Offensive: Zeigler/Vescovi/Key or Phillips/JJJ/Nkamhoua. If you’ve read the rest of the preview this will presumably not come as a surprise. That’s 4.5 shooters on the floor, three of which (Key/JJJ/Nkamhoua/maybe Phillips?) have real post skills, three of which can attack the rim pretty well, all of whom can score and score efficiently. If this lineup is not Tennessee’s best from an offensive perspective by year’s end I’ll be stunned.
Defensive: Zeigler/Vescovi/Mashack/James/Nkamhoua. I could absolutely be swayed by Phillips being in here instead or even Nkamhoua being out of it entirely. This is the one that will have more unknowns at this moment in time. Still, I feel very confident in the Zeigler/Vescovi backcourt being a part of any game-ending lineup. James will be out there. Mashack may well be Davonte Gaines II at this point, which works to get a stop. Nkamhoua is simply my best guess at this time.