Round of 64, March 16: (4) Tennessee 58, (13) Louisiana-Lafayette 55 (24-10)
Round of 32, March 18: (4) Tennessee 65, (5) Duke 52 (25-10)
Sweet Sixteen, March 23: (4) Tennessee vs. (9) Florida Atlantic, 9 PM ET
I guess the answer was right in front of us the whole time? After another Gruden Grinder win last year against LSU I wrote this at the old site:
They are very, very good at several things. The thing they are very best at is taking about 90% of their opponents, turning the heat up on defense, watching as the dirt turns to wet, wet mud, and seeing these overmatched opponents flop around, unable to find stable footing in the Knoxville slop.
This is the genesis of good things for Tennessee. Sure, you get the occasional great shooting nights…sure, Tennessee still has the capacity to do a lot of good inside the perimeter…sure, there are other ways to win. But this – dragging other teams into the mud like little pigs, watching them flounder as you laugh at how uncomfortable they are – this is Tennessee’s identity. And at some point, you have to be alright with that.
During the last few weeks, in trying to make sense of a nonsensical close to the season, I think I missed the forest for the trees. The way Tennessee’s offense runs can be pretty dreary even at full strength. There are stretches of games where it seems like they just turn a switch off and forget where the switch was because all the lights are out. Those few weeks led to a realization that playing In The Mud was both Tennessee’s best shot and probably a permanent limitation.
You go up 48-30 on a 13 seed, figure it’s more or less done, and file that game away in your head as going according to plan. Tennessee’s defense completely stuffed ULL in a locker for 30 minutes, didn’t let them run any of their normal actions, and was at least mildly successful on the other end. Then they flipped the switch off, and as ULL went on a 13-0 run to get back into it and the lead slowly dwindled away, once again, Tennessee struggled to find it.
An escape is an escape in Survive and Advance Season. It looks less ideal when your 5-seed opponent demolishes the hottest 12-seed in the field by 23 and has won 13 of 15 games while you’ve lost 7 of 14. Despite being favored by KenPom, Torvik, etc., Tennessee entered Saturday as a 4-point underdog to a lower seed. It was the largest a 4-seed’s been an underdog in any Round of 32 game since 2015.
If you could encapsulate it further than that, every single media member in existence (minus Joe Rexrode!) was fully behind Duke. Jeff Goodman mentioned on a podcast he’d need a spread in the double digits to consider backing Tennessee. Most everyone was beginning to write Duke into the Final Four after Purdue’s shocking loss to a 16 seed. Even before that, given the obvious vulnerabilities of Purdue, many were writing them in and glancing directly past a Tennessee team without their point guard.
If you are someone who buys into a narrative, I understand. I have done the same. I have done the same so many times that it is miraculous anyone listens to me. This is the same blog that declared this Tennessee team to be the best one in program history, then had to shamefully sit in silence after that was revealed to likely not be the case. February 2023, arguably, is one of the worst, least-satisfying months in modern Tennessee basketball history.
But there is also a post on this site, one about how February has proven itself time and time again to be the least-important month of the college basketball season. And when I wondered what hope there was, I pondered that post, again and again.
A lot of teams run out the Nobody Believes In Us narrative whenever it’s convenient but this is a time where I really do believe nobody believed in Tennessee, minus the fans and contrarian observers. It also helps that Duke’s team featured three of the top 10 recruits from the most recent class, two of which are likely to be lottery picks. They’ve struggled with health as well, but they appeared to be rounding into form at the right time.
The NCAA Tournament simply has a funny way of resetting everything. Tennessee fans would know, because they experienced all of this just last year with one of the more crushing early exits in program history. That same team, a year later, limped into March with bruises and cuts and somehow two blown tires and also a missing cylinder. They escaped their 13-seed opponent. That gave them a chance to hit their own reset button.
On Saturday, they brought all of that on their back - the bruises, the hurt, the rage, the disappointment - and let it all out for 40 minutes. One probably knew it was going to be different from early on, when Uros Plavsic committed an offensive foul by elbowing Kyle Filipowski (unintentionally, mind you) in the face. Then he cleared Filipowski out into the fourth row on a rebound. Then Jonas Aidoo cleared everyone for an offensive rebound, accidentally hit Filipowski on the way down, and Filipowski was cut, requiring Duke’s corner cutman to fix him up before the next round began.
That set the tone early. Commentators of the national variety - not all - have dismissed this as Tennessee playing dirty. Not that basketball regularly looks exactly like this in the SEC and Big Ten in particular or anything, mind you, but it simply has to be dirty. This is not the way Real Basketball is played. This is…uh, the way they play in Europe, if you pay attention to one particular xenophobic commentator.
And, fine, maybe it’s not Real Basketball. It certainly isn’t the way Gonzaga or Baylor or Xavier or Texas or even the very specific on-court product of Alabama plays basketball. It’s not sexy. I would wager that for the neutral fan, particularly those under 30, it’s probably actively a turnoff. But my basketball - my beautiful, dark twisted Burnley Ball, my Brexit Ball - it works. And it works in this specific NCAA Tournament setting, in this specific context.
From tip to 0:00, Tennessee embraced the fact that, on paper, they are the less talented and less sexy team. All they did was introduce a level of physicality and nastiness to the game that Duke hadn’t seen all season in the ACC, or even in non-conference play. Filipowski, who ended this game looking like he’d been through an MMA brawl, confirmed as such.
Even those who didn’t make it to the interview table confirmed the suspicions.
That is what this Tennessee team is defined by. They are flawed offensively; they go through stretches where you wonder if certain players on the team have touched a basketball before. They are capable of extremely, extremely silly things. And at the same time, they are capable of so much, just like they were in the first three months of the season.
For a stats guy to be telling you that Toughness and Heart and Grit really matter is probably a funny thing to hear. But it feels real, and in some aspect you can see it in the stats. Look at the Four Factors from Saturday:
So much jumps out. Tennessee forced this game into their pace, which is like Duke playing Virginia but as part of a cage match. Tennessee forced the shooting battle to a draw. They passed the ball well. They shot 9-for-21 from three. All good and fine. But what matters to the story of this game, and the reason it went the way it did, are those middle three.
TO%: Duke 24.5%, Tennessee 15%
OREB%: Duke 20.7%, Tennessee 33.3%
FT Rate: Duke 14.3%, Tennessee 22.8%
That’s how it’s done for this edition of Tennessee. They grit and they grind and they drag you into the mud and you cannot get out unless you’re tough enough. That’s how you get eight more shots off plus more free throws. They brought toughness to the table. In all honesty, that’s what I feel matters most this March. It’s not even a Feelingsball thing, it’s real. Look at who’s made it to the Sweet Sixteen of the higher seeds: Houston, who is Chopped and Screwed Tennessee. Alabama, who’s terrific on the boards. UCLA, who plays nasty defense like Tennessee. Texas, who plays extremely aggressively on the perimeter and gets in your grill for a full 40.
Whether it’s appealing to a non-fan is beyond me at this point. I do not care. With both the 1 and 2 seeds gone in their region, Tennessee is the new favorite to make the Final Four, and at minimum, they will be favored over 9-seed Florida Atlantic to make the school’s second Elite Eight ever. Anything can happen in a single-elimination tournament with high-variance outcomes, but Tennessee has put themselves in position to succeed unlike several teams before them. It’s all one can ask for.
The way they’re doing it, frankly, is a thrill. Can’t take the bumps and bruises? Get out of the arena. Don’t want to get grimy? Stay home. Not interested in getting into the mud and coming down to their world? In this specific version of March, best of luck. I admire the attitude these kids have. Seeing a populace that has largely given up on them, they sink ever deeper into the mud, drawing all oncomers in there with them. There is no flash, no highlight culture. It is all scrap and heap and brawl and hustle. If only I had seen this exact thing in the state of Tennessee before.
We in the mud. That’s who we are now. Keep up or get swallowed whole by a boa constrictor called Tennessee.
Some quick-hitter analysis:
The Nkamhoua game! Exclamation point very necessary. For the first three years of Olivier Nkamhoua’s career, there was a common complaint that he simply didn’t bring it versus quality competition. As a senior he’s erased that a few times over, but none as impressive as this. Duke was completely able to stop a stretch 4/small-ball 5 that was scoring at all three levels. Rexrode already wrote about this but that’s what elevates Tennessee’s ceiling.
A combo of Get It Together and Well Sometimes You’re Unlucky. That’s how I would describe the 58-55 win over Louisiana-Lafayette. Jalen Dalcourt going 3-for-8 from three is fine, but Kobe Julien - a player who averaged seven minutes a game this year - turning into Klay Thompson was more than a bit much. Tennessee also deserved a better result from three, but you could’ve said that about 10 other games this year.
Once again no one can score in this thing. I’ve mentioned many a time that I don’t bet but I do find certain aspects of it very informational. This is one of those times. Unders went an astonishing 30-10 the first three days of the NCAAT before teams finally began scoring on Sunday (2-6) and bringing it back to reality. A similar trend existed last year. Teams are shooting 3% worse from deep and scoring 3 PPG less so far this tournament. I think that plays into Tennessee’s defense-first hands, no?
It’s just about making history. Tennessee held both ULL and Duke below 0.86 PPP, which is an impressive achievement considering both have fine-to-good offenses. It turns out upon further research that this is a great achievement for any Tournament run. Since 2008, Tennessee’s one of just 10 teams (minimum of a top-125 opponent on the other side) to hold both their Round of 64 and 32 opponents below 0.86 PPP. No team has done it thrice in a single Tournament run aside from 2018 Michigan.
Boards over everything. I mean dang. Duke got held to a 20.7% OREB%, their third-lowest output of the entire season. This was after holding ULL to 20.6%, their lowest against a Division I team this season. Whatever Tennessee has done as a program to improve their defensive rebounding skills from, say, 2018-19 has obviously worked.
Very quietly, the fouling problem might be decreasing. Tennessee’s last four games, all on neutral courts, in terms of FT Rate Allowed: 22.6%, 22.8%, 16.4%, 14.3%. Those are four of their nine best outputs of the entire season in terms of not fouling. At neutral courts specifically, Tennessee has gotten into foul trouble much less often than in true road games.
Just like the entire season, the story of March is Shot Volume. Of the remaining teams in the field, 12 are above water in turnover margin. The top five teams in title odds are 32nd in OREB% or higher. Only two teams left are below-average defensive rebounding teams. Shooting matters; getting shots up in the first place matters more in this environment.
I didn't see anything "dirty" outside of Uros's two early fouls which were embellished by Flipkowski. This looked like the same type of game we've played all year. I do worry about all of the pearl clutching by the national media and hope the next game isn't officiated very closely .
All this hand wringing through the year about their offense had a simple explanation; it’s who is on this team and how it’s built. With this roster, defense and rebounding gives them the best chance to win. They have depth which is overlooked. Media harps on them being metrics frauds but the numbers remove the bias and have them top 10 all year. It’s Barnes best job since being at UT.