2023-24 Tennessee basketball preview: nine burning questions
mmmmmmm overanalyzing the analysis
PREVIOUSLY: Backcourt, frontcourt, schedule analysis.
Stolen blatantly from MGoBlog’s 5Q5A series on football, this series attempts to do something similar for Tennessee basketball. I select the questions that I personally think are most relevant to the team, with at least 1-2 more relevant to the program at-large.
This year’s team has several questions to answer like any team does, but it does feel like there are more positive answers to those questions than most any other year in my lifetime. The only two years I’m able to remember with higher national expectations were 2018-19 and 2007-08, the two years Tennessee eventually reached #1 in the AP Poll. I don’t think it’s worth going on record as saying 2023-24 would see that happen again, but entering the year 9th in the AP, 8th in KenPom, and a consensus top-10 team in every poll imaginable brings a lot of weight.
The 2023-24 Tennessee Volunteers will get to etch their name in history soon enough, whether that history is good, bad, or neutral. Before they take the court for real, let’s attempt to find answers to nine burning questions. Nine for Rick Barnes’s ninth year in charge.
This post is free. I am feeling weirdly charitable! We’ll be back to evil paywalled content soon enough.
Can this be the Tennessee team that actually breaks through in March?
I mean, yeah. In past years we have had the following teams make the Elite Eight or further: 15 seed Saint Peter’s, 12 seed Oregon State, 11 seed UCLA, 10 seed Miami, etc. From 2002 to 2023, using KenPom odds, we’ve seen eight teams with a 5% or lower chance of making the Elite Eight actually make the Elite Eight. If you prefer the Final Four we’ve seen eight teams at 2% or lower to do it do it. This is a sport where everything depends on the bounce of a round orb that can be either your hero or your victim.
Aside from the scattershot and excruciatingly annoying 2008-09 and 2010-11 teams, the Tennessee team that did make the Elite Eight was the one with the lowest odds of doing so. No one likes to think of the 2009-10 team in anything but a positive light these days, but they entered that Tournament barely inside the KenPom top 40 and had an offense ranked 99th-best nationally. They had some putrid, putrid performances throughout the season. Any of you guys remember getting demolished by USC? Or losing back to back games to Georgia and Vandy? Maybe a 29-point loss to Kentucky rings a bell?
The point is that March is far from predictable. If it were, the Tennessee team that would’ve broken through would either be the 2018-19 or 2021-22 teams. Aside from 2009-10, the next-biggest overachiever Tennessee has seen was the 2013-14 Cuonzo team…which probably not-so-coincidentally was the only Tennessee team in the 27-season KenPom era to have a top-25 offense and defense.
I did a lot of research last year about how being a doomer wasn’t fun and that being all offense really wasn’t any better than being all defense, but the point is more that Tennessee probably requires more balance. Most teams do. These were the offense-first teams that I ran for The Field of 68 (Baylor predictably nose-dived in the second round):
And these were the defense-first top-4 seeds, which had slightly more success but functionally had the same number of wins.
Now, it’s not an out-and-out requirement that Tennessee has to suddenly have a top-15 offense to fix everything. Just last year, San Diego State made a run to the title game with the sport’s 64th-best offense. It just happens to be exceedingly rare. If you take a wild guess that Tennessee ends up as a top-4 seed this year, which they should, these are the stats probably worth keeping in mind.
1-4 seeds that made the Final Four or further averaged a #12 offense and #18 defense nationally, with an overall rank of #6.
Of the 64 1-4 seeds that have done it across the last 21 Tournaments, exactly one - 2011-12 Louisville - did it with an offense ranked outside the top 40. Just seven have had a defense ranked outside the top 40.
1-4 seeds that had both a top 25 offense and defense won 2.81 games on average. Everyone else: 1.86 games.
Now, doing the double here is difficult. Only about 7-8 teams do it in an average season, and Tennessee has managed it once in 27 years. Even getting the offense inside the KenPom top 30, something they have done twice in the last 14 seasons (oof), would be a real step forward. I have serious doubts that Tennessee’s defense will crater with anything meaningful, and our one data point at the time of writing was an exhibition in which Tennessee played pretty well against a top-5 team despite said top-5 team hitting 47% of their threes.
That is your goal: basically everyone can and should begin to believe if these guys can crack the national top 30 in offense. If they’re a top-25 offensive unit at season’s end they’ll have my full and complete attention. Even during Lent! How hard can it be?
Does Tennessee have anything to prevent the frequent offensive droughts?
Yes, for the most part. The issue with this a year ago was two-fold: Tennessee had no plus shooters minus Santiago Vescovi and they only had one player on the entire team that could attack the paint and the perimeter. Said player was 5’9” Zakai Zeigler, and while everyone loves Zeigler, it was not a very well-built roster in terms of offensive success. They swung and missed big time on state hero Tyreke Key and no one else really stepped up.
To Barnes’ credit, every addition he made to the team this offseason was offensively focused. Dalton Knecht is the obvious one that’s already popped off the map, but Jordan Gainey is a career 41% deep shooter and Freddie Dilione led Overtime Elite in scoring last year. This year’s roster has five players who’ve already averaged 11+ PPG in a college season at least once, plus Dilione sitting there at a freshman ready to pop off.
Thanks to their typically-amazing defense Tennessee didn’t give up many EvanMiya Kill Shots (10-0 runs) last year, but they did give up one about every four games and had about one 4+ minute drought every three games or so. This is another thing where we aren’t asking Tennessee to eliminate EVERY scoring drought they have because that is impossible when your roster is made up of college kids (every team in the nation last year had at least five), we’re just asking them to make that once every five or six games instead of once every three.
Does losing Olivier Nkamhoua matter to the bottom line?
A lot of national media people are convinced this is so, but I am not as much. Nkamhoua was a good and useful player to have around, one who single-handedly beat Duke and Texas last year and had some other good games. There are reasons he was a fairly desired portal piece! There are also reasons that most Tennessee faithful (and, yes, the staff) were fine with him leaving, because he had as many 2-point outings (2) as he did 22+ point outings.
Olivier’s talent is so tantalizing, and when he puts it together the way he did against Duke or Texas (I would also highlight Arizona as a tremendous performance), you can see the vision and why so many want him. You can also flip on a game like Colorado - 4 points on 8 shots and 4 turnovers - and figure out precisely why he is such an infuriating player to watch. Measuring player value on a 1:1 scale is hard, but I think it’s telling that this is how public analytics sites viewed Nkamhoua’s value among Tennessee’s roster:
EvanMiya: 6th-best player
Torvik: 4th-best
Hoop-Explorer: 5th-best
Box Plus-Minus: 3rd-best
Now, losing around the 4th-best player on a top 10 team still matters. Even Evan’s rankings, lower on Nkamhoua than anyone, still had him as the 44th-best transfer available this offseason. He’s likely going to be no worse than Michigan’s second-best player this year (he or Dug McDaniel), and that’s a top-two player on a top-50 team. I think that’s reasonable: an instantly good starter at most Big Six schools, but probably not a season-swinging piece. Just a nice guy to have around.
But considering Torvik’s analytics would have had him as the fourth-best player on Tennessee’s team this year and not #1 or #2 like national media seem to be implying, I think it’s a survivable loss.
Is Dalton Knecht (or Jordan Gainey) the transfer that finally breaks through?
Tennessee’s Barnes-era history with transfers is…uh, yeah. Here’s the full list of guys who have transferred into Tennessee and played more than 7 MPG, with their decline or improvement in Torvik’s PRPG! stat measured:
Lew Evans (2016-17): +1.4 to +0.6 PRPG! (-0.8), 100 ORtg on 15% Usage
James Daniel III (2017-18): +3.8 to +1.3 PRPG! (-2.5), 105 ORtg on 18% Usage
Victor Bailey Jr. (2020-21): +1.6 to +2.7 PRPG! (+1.1), 109 ORtg on 21% Usage
EJ Anosike (2020-21): +3.3 to +0.3 PRPG! (-3.0), 99 ORtg on 15% Usage
Justin Powell (2021-22): +3.3 to +0.9 PRPG! (-2.4), 109 ORtg on 13% Usage
Tyreke Key (2022-23): +4.6 to +1.5 PRPG! (-3.1), 102 ORtg on 19% Usage
When your rosiest transfer case through eight-plus seasons is Victor Bailey Jr., a player who had a nasty 2021-22 season that followed his first good year, your transfer record is really, really bad. It stands to reason that a lot of Tennessee fans are perhaps wary of Knecht and Gainey, especially now that both combined for 48 points on 26 shots against a defense that KenPom has 10th-best in the nation heading into the season. That is not a joke, because everyone watched Tyreke Key dump 26 on then-#3 Gonzaga last October.
But! I have a counter for each player.
Knecht: Tennessee quite literally hasn’t had an offensive wing like him since Admiral Schofield. My proof: Knecht’s 2022-23 year at Northern Colorado, where he made at least 50 shots at the rim, midrange, and from three, would be the first season by a Tennessee wing to do the same since Admiral Schofield.
Alternately, maybe you like that Knecht made 98 shots at the rim and 75 from three. You might also hate contested mid-range jumpers! If so, then your only modern comparable in orange is Jordan McRae.
If you want to scale back both of those a bit, sure, why not. Maybe Knecht *only* gets 50+ makes at the rim and 50+ threes this year. Seems very feasible. This would still put him in a group of three players in the last 16 years of Tennessee basketball.
The guy is different than Tyreke Key, a player who was five inches shorter and not as prolific a deep shooter as Knecht. He is also different from Justin Powell, a fellow white guy who could not get to the rim reliably at all. I’m not sure what more about this dunk, combined with a day where he made three threes and was the best offensive player on the court in a true road environment versus #4, couldn’t at least excite you a little bit. I’d argue it probably bodes well that his two strongest statistical similarities are Schofield and senior year Kevin Punter. (Torvik also suggests Kario Oquendo But A Shooter, which is very tantalizing.)
Gainey requires a little more to convince. Just 15% of his attempts in college have been at the rim, per Torvik, and unsurprisingly seven of his 10 attempts against Michigan State were from three. (Sorry but I plan on taking nothing from the Lenoir-Rhyne exhibition.) He played admirably against MSU on defense and that does inspire some confidence, but I need more than one exhibition to erase two years of data suggesting a pedestrian defender.
But! Gainey is a shooter. That matters. 4-7 from three against MSU is obviously nice, but I’m more interested in him hitting 60+ threes in both of his college seasons. Here’s a full list of the players in the SEC in 2022-23 that made 60+ threes.
Ten! Ten players. That’s it. With Knecht and Gainey, plus Vescovi’s return, Tennessee has three dudes on the roster that made at least 60 from deep a year ago. The only other SEC team that can say the same is Alabama, and I think everyone generally seems pretty happy with their offensive structure. At least based on the process, I liked Tennessee’s decision-making in the portal this offseason. Now, we’ll have to see how it works on the floor.
Is Tennessee actually going to play fast, or is this coach speak?
We’ll see. This is the question thus far I’m least rosy on. Rick Barnes has 27 seasons of data on KenPom. Five times - five - he has ranked in the top 100 of tempo. The only two Tennessee teams to rank above the national average in offensive possession length were his first team and the 2018-19 squad everyone correctly adored. I’ll note that I have done a lot of research on if tempo and offensive success are linked in any way, and they really aren’t. That being said, more transition possessions = more transition points, and those points come easier than half-court.
Our only two data points so far, excluding the Italy series where they played with a 24-second shot clock, are the two exhibitions. To Tennessee’s credit, both of these were speedier than we’re used to. Tennessee and Michigan State played an 80-possession affair, which would’ve been Tennessee’s fastest regulation game since November 2016. Some of that is a super high foul count, but Tennessee and MSU also combined for 49 fastbreak points. After ranking 312th in fastbreak points last year (6.25 per game), scoring 22 against a top-10 defense is a nice change of pace. All I’d be asking for is 11 a game, which would’ve been top-100 last season.
The Lenoir-Rhyne exhibition was more or less an elongated practice session, but Tennessee generated 26 fastbreak points in that one, too. Considering the season high in a game last year was 19, I do think that going 20+ in back-to-back games matters. The 22 fastbreak points against MSU would’ve been their most in a single game since a November 2021 blowout over ETSU. They aren’t real games, but they are data points of some amount.
Will the effects of Mike Schwartz’s departure be felt this year, or is the defense permanently God-level?
Mike Schwartz, former assistant, is largely credited with designing the Tennessee defense that has now ranked 5th, 3rd, and 1st in the three post-COVID seasons. It forces tons of jumpers, creates lots of havoc plays, and has successfully eliminated Tennessee’s defensive rebounding problem that plagued the first several Barnes teams at Tennessee. It’s a blast to watch!
This is what I had on the books for this exact question last year:
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.
…
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.
Year one of Gainey running the show was borderline perfect. They ranked #1 in KenPom’s Adjusted Defense rankings, #3 in eFG% allowed, #20 in TO% forced, #15 in 2PT% allowed, and #50 in Block%. They also ranked 105th in DREB%, which is made more impressive once remembering the SEC ranked as the second-best OREB conference last season. Had they cracked the top 100, they would’ve been one of two high-major teams (2021-22 Texas Tech) in the last four seasons to be top 20 in eFG%/top 20 TO%/top 100 DREB%. That’s how good this unit was. Lest you think it was just 3PT% luck, ShotQuality had them #2 nationally even with severe regression.
Luckily for Gainey, he more or less returns the core pieces of that defense intact. Gone are Olivier Nkamhoua to Michigan and Julian Phillips to the NBA, but aside from that, five of the top seven defenders on last year’s team are back for another go. That’s why Tennessee probably felt as comfortable as they did attacking the portal for offensive pieces.
There is a path, albeit a slim one, to this somehow not being a top-10 unit in the nation. Maybe Tennessee gets victimized from three, maybe Jonas Aidoo and the frontcourt struggles with fouls, maybe Knecht and Gainey really are turnstiles. I’d just be really surprised if all of those things came true. I guess I’m once again saying Wait ‘Til Next Year for the post-Schwartz after-effects if they do exist.
How do the minutes settle themselves out by the middle of SEC play?
Originally, this was two separate questions:
The one above;
Who falls out of the rotation.
But they functionally answer the same original question, so whatever. I think you can separate the players into a few different categories. These will answer the second question - who’s in the rotation - first. Sorry!
Stone Cold Locks: Santiago Vescovi, Zakai Zeigler, Dalton Knecht. If any of these players reaches the end of SEC play and haven’t averaged at least 27.5 minutes per game, I would be really taken aback. Vescovi and Zeigler are obvious as All-SEC types at their respective positions. Given that Knecht has limitations on defense, you might be surprised to see him here…but at the same time, he’s the exact type of player that can be hidden on Just A Shooters.
I had him charted for functionally zero huge mistakes against MSU but I also barely had to chart him at all. Knecht switched well and didn’t really give up any truly horrendous points. Tennessee’s staff had him laser-focused on Tre Holloman when Holloman was in the game. He’s a very low-usage guard. He also had the Jaden Akins assignment at times, a 6’4” guard who mostly hovers on the perimeter waiting for threes. That’s the type of guy you’re probably having Knecht cover in real games.
Probable Locks: Josiah-Jordan James, Jonas Aidoo, Jahmai Mashack. James is the easiest case to make for someone that should be in the above section. He’s a fifth-year senior that passed up a likely G-League deal for another year on a top 10 team. He’s just a role player, but he does play his role well enough to continue earning a lot of minutes. Still, I think Tennessee’s going to be less afraid to pull him if he’s not shooting well just because they’ve got more dudes they can throw in instead of him. The leash is going to be shorter than usual.
Aidoo also could end up being a lock. I’ve gone on record as thinking he might be in the process of a mini-leap and turning into a better version of Kyle Alexander, but even so, better Kyle Alexander never had to fight Tobe Awaka for minutes. It might be a deal where his per-minute stats are remarkable but he only plays 24.5 MPG or something due to fouls. Mashack is who he is: the best defender on the team and the worst offensive player in the rotation. The ball-handling skills he has are extremely useful, though. He could end up anywhere from 13-23 MPG at season’s end and I wouldn’t be surprised.
Role Players Who Will Play Anywhere From 8-25 Minutes: Freddie Dilione V, Jordan Gainey, Tobe Awaka. Dilione and Gainey may be in the second group at this point. Gainey’s looked like a legitimate top-3 or 4 offensive option on the team thus far, while Dilione is about two months away from fully adjusting to the speed of the college game and turning into a regular 12 PPG scorer. I think he’s going to be awesome at some point, but it might not be until January or later.
Awaka is more or less required to get minutes as Aidoo’s backup, but the part of the offseason where I thought he might pass up Aidoo for the starting gig doesn’t look to be happening. Again, just one exhibition, but giving Aidoo 29 minutes against MSU and Aidoo turning into one of the very best rim protectors in the nation confines Awaka to backup center minutes. I do not think they can play together, by the way, unless Aidoo commits to taking 2-3 threes a night. Awaka is so relentless on the boards that he’ll still find his way into no fewer than 12 MPG, but his ceiling this year might be 16-18.
Fringe Pieces That Could Steal A Spot: Cameron Carr. Just fascinated by this guy, really. Carr was a knockdown shooter in high school and has a truly bonkers build: 6’5” with a 7’1” wingspan. He is also fearless, as evidenced by launching seven (7) threes in just 19 minutes against Lenoir-Rhyne. I can get into it, especially since he appears to be the least-lost of the freshmen defensively.
The problem is figuring out whose minutes he’d take. Do you delete Gainey or Dilione’s minutes for Carr? Mashack’s? Carr can realistically play anywhere from the 2 to 4, but I don’t think you’re benching JJJ for him. The best-case scenario is that he’s good enough to steal minutes here and there while prepping for a breakout sophomore campaign.
Blowout Minutes: JP Estrella, Cade Phillips. Writers seem convinced that one of these guys absolutely has to play at times because you need a third big, but this is 2023 and I promise you are not required to play two bigs at once. Seriously! Whole big thing. Anyway, I like Estrella a little more than Phillips at this time mostly because he can shoot. These guys are only playing if Tennessee is up by 20+ in the dying minutes of a game or if both of Awaka/Aidoo pick up multiple first-half fouls.
Out: DJ Jefferson. I think we’re all aware of where this is heading. I thought Jefferson was the worst non-freshman on the court in Italy, and he was the only scholarship player not to touch the court against Michigan State. He didn’t play until the dying minutes of a mega-blowout in the second exhibition. The more annoying members of Tennessee’s fanbase are likely going to blame Rick Barnes for applying discipline to a guy who gets lost remarkably often on defense and reportedly has academic issues in the background. Some guys simply aren’t fits. If Jefferson ends up breaking into the rotation at any point this season it would be a stunning upset.
THE MINUTES, IN ORDER
This is my best guess as to what you’re looking at for the back half of SEC games or something like it. You can consider this The Average Lineup When Playing Good Teams and When Healthy.
Santiago Vescovi, 32
Dalton Knecht, 29
Zakai Zeigler, 27
Josiah-Jordan James, 25
Jonas Aidoo, 24
Jahmai Mashack, 17
Freddie Dilione, 16
Tobe Awaka, 15
Jordan Gainey, 15
That’s a total of 200 minutes, which is your full allotted amount. I look at that and think things like “no way Freddie Dilione only gets 16 MPG” or “no way Zakai Zeigler only goes for 27.” But I kind of think it’s going to have to be that way. This is an unusually deep rotation with no fewer than nine legitimate SEC-level contributors or better.
This is also guessing that Dilione is just what we’ve seen so far: a fine, still learning guard who’s really struggling on defense. If he comes in above expectation then you’re really gonna have a minutes crunch. Or if Jahmai Mashack figures out how to play offense. Or if Jordan Gainey shoots 45% from three. Or, or, or…
Who is the late-game Guy?
This is probably a very easy question to answer. In all likelihood, the guy with the highest number of clutch time shots is Dalton Knecht at year’s end. I wanted to wait for a bit to really confirm it, but we now have five separate points of data at our hands: the three Italy games and the two exhibitions. In four of the five games, Knecht has led the team in field goal attempts and scoring. In the fifth, he tied for the scoring lead. That’s your go-to guy.
The other secondary candidates are fairly obvious guesses. As the main ball-handler, Zakai Zeigler will get his shot to shut down some games. Jordan Gainey also strikes me as a very useful situational piece in late-game scenarios. And, as always, you have Santiago Vescovi available if things require the deft hand of a fifth-year senior. I would be very surprised if any of Jahmai Mashack or Jonas Aidoo or JJJ get off real numbers of late-game shots unless it’s an emergency.
How much longer does Rick Barnes plan on doing this?
Well. Now you’ve really arrived!
Barnes is 69 years old and is entering a remarkable 36th-straight season as a head coach. At 779 career wins, he’s 21 short of the 800 mark, which just 30 coaches ever will have hit once Barnes, Bill Self (787), and John Calipari (790) do so by season’s end. He got Tennessee their first conference tournament trophy in 43 years plus now has two of the program’s seven Sweet Sixteen bids since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
But: he’s missing that one great run. Barnes has yet to crack the Elite Eight at Tennessee and has only touched one Final Four (2003 Texas) in his career. There is no indication that this is specifically holding him back from calling it a career, and there’s no indication that he has a specific win goal in mind. Barnes would probably tell you publicly that the Tournament is not the great decider in whether he feels like a successful or not-successful coach.
Barnes is under contract with the school through 2027-28, but contracts are made to be broken. If Tennessee makes it to the Elite Eight or Final Four (or further!) this season, he may call it a career. He might stick around for the remainder of Zakai Zeigler’s career, clearly one of his most-loved players he’s ever coached. He may even stick it out through 2027-28. If he did, he would be 73 years old at the end of that season. The only older coaches in the Big Six right now are Leonard Hamilton and Jim Larranaga.
Barnes, as far as I am personally able to tell, is the fourth-oldest coach active in college basketball this year. I may be wrong on that, but I would be stunned if he’s not at least one of the 7-8 oldest. He will not be at this forever. Fellow contemporary and lifelong friend Bob McKillop retired from Davidson at age 71; Barnes doing the same would be after 2025-26. I don’t think we’ll know until we know, but he has more than earned the right to call it a day whenever he wants to.