Help! I've Fallen Into the Black Pit of Negative Expectations and I Can't Get Up

Under a funeral moon

March 9: (5) Tennessee 70, (13) Mississippi 55 (23-9)
March 10: (4) Missouri 79, (5) Tennessee 71 (23-10)
4 seed in the East Region, 14th overall

There was a period of time during the last few weeks where I’ve been pondering Rick Barnes’s proximity to being Protestant Sean Dyche. Dyche is the former head man at Burnley (former Premier League, now Championship) and is currently employed by Everton to help them avoid their first-ever English relegation. Dyche Ball is extremely easy to spot from afar: a rigid 4-4-2, midfielders with names like Harvey and Phil, and an absolute physical beatdown every time you take the field (erm, pitch).

Some have called it a shame to the game, and truth be told as a Leeds United supporter I get pretty frustrated watching Dyche teams get away with tackles that would be obvious yellow cards for essentially any other team. Inarguably, though, it works. Burnley stayed up in the EPL for nearly a decade despite almost always having the league’s lowest budget. They’re a near-lock to bounce right back up this year under a new manager. Likewise, Everton have gone from the relegation zone to 15th under Dyche in just a few weeks.

Barnes basketball has a few similarities. Tennessee’s defense is perennially a pain in the rear to deal with if you’re the opponent. Unless you heavily outperform your expected shooting rates, points don’t come easy. Tennessee is dominating on the boards, forces a ton of turnovers, and plays extremely aggressive, physical basketball. On defense.

Dyche-era Burnley ranked out in the bottom three or four of the EPL basically every year in goals scored. It wasn’t how they won games. Instead, the goal was to win every match 1-0, outperform their talent, and grit and grind you to death. It was basically never pretty, but it generally worked. At the same time, Burnley seemingly never won a single big game of real importance.

The Barnes Quandary is the same: elite physicality, elite defense, not friendly to neutral viewers, and a lack of postseason success. Which is why around the 500th made Missouri three on Friday I began slipping back into the Black Pit of Negative Expectations, knowing that the time of year Tennessee faithful fear most has once again arrived, like the grim reaper.

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Brian Cook at MGoBlog conceived the Black Pit of Negative Expectations to be about Michigan football but I’ve found it bizarrely useful for a wide variety of sports fandoms out there. Notably:

The BPONE is a state of mind in which no part of a football game is enjoyable because it is merely a prelude to some pratfall made more embarrassing and or painful by whatever minimal, temporary successes are experienced prior to the pratfall. Thus a kick return touchdown—that rarest butterfly, one the game is steadily trying to erase—during which your author's only reaction was internal and, I quote, "whoop-de-damn-do."

…

The flaw in BPONE operations is of course the impossibility of mining any enjoyment out of your experience. BPONE sufferers assume a football game is a negative emotional event and spread those negative emotions out more broadly. Only if the team should actually come back and win will any regret be felt, and pffffffffft. I'm in the pit, baby! I know for a stone cold fact that a punt snap will somehow lodge itself in the facemask of the punter. I feel it in my bones that the one time we jump a route in this game the ensuing interception will bang off the defensive back's hands and lodge itself in the facemask of the opposition 50 yards downfield.

Change out a few football terms for basketball and there you have it. Most of the Extremely Online Tennessee Fanbase seems more or less done with this team, this program, this whatnot. You could blame this on a lot of things, and I’ve seen more than a few go with the “Tennessee fans are ungrateful” angle online. But I prefer a different spin on it from Cook again, after the Michigan/Iowa football game this past season:

The story of the last 20 years of being a Michigan fan is gradually getting the arrogance beaten out of you. . . . there was the slight twinge of concern that if Michigan didn't get their butts in gear that they could actually lose. Then they lost, and it was incomprehensible.

Somehow that incomprehensibility-in-the-moment lasted and lasted and lasted even though Michigan kept playing games like this against their purported lessers.

And this, again, more or less describes Tennessee athletics and fandom. Similar to Michigan, the story of essentially everything related to Tennessee from the year 2002 onward is slowly getting the arrogance beaten out of you. 8-4 being a down year in football turns into the best the program can do for 15 years. Women’s basketball is title-less since 2008 after claiming eight in two decades. The baseball team put together one of the best teams college baseball has ever seen only to lose in that sport’s Sweet Sixteen. Softball hasn’t won either SEC title since 2011.

Then there is men’s basketball. Tennessee is arguably at the most successful position the program has ever been in, or at least it is sustainability-wise. Tennessee has racked up 16 wins over Top 15 teams since November 2017, the ninth-highest number in the sport over that span. They’ve won 142 games total in the last six seasons, the most of any SEC program. Of the nine times the program has ever been a top-four side, four have come in the last six years.

But when you have a total of four NCAA Tournament wins to show for it, people get restless. When you have new ways to break your heart constantly lurking around the corner in every sport Tennessee participates in, people sort of stick on the sidelines. The diehards will always buy in, but some are a little tired of dying hard. I can understand it.

For three months this season looked like The Season and it genuinely appeared like Tennessee was on pace to have the best team they’ve had in program history. Then February happened. Two buzzer-beaters, seven losses, and as wide a variety of disasters (however minimal) a team has produced here in some time. People bring up the 2020-21 team in relation but they never beat Kansas or Texas or #1 Alabama or any of that. They just sorta flopped after a hot start. This one had three months of almost consistent heat and then got electrocuted.

As such, the level of expectation for this year’s team in the Big Dance is honestly the lowest I can remember under Barnes. If I had to take a crack at it I would guess the average Tennessee fan expects an exit in the Round of 32 to Duke, with some going as far as to say they’ll lose to 13-seed Louisiana-Lafayette. All of that is certainly on the table because anything’s doable in March, both good and bad.

But there is the good side of this, too. The 2010 Elite Eight team everyone adored got swept by Vanderbilt and went 2-5 against SEC teams that made the NCAA Tournament. The Cuonzo Martin Sweet Sixteen team lost four games to teams ranked outside of the KenPom top 100. Meanwhile, the best team in school history is either 2007-08, who got housed by Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen and probably should’ve lost to Butler in the prior round, or 2018-19, a team that lost a Flamethrower Game to Purdue and blew a 25-point lead to Iowa in the Round of 32.

It is, as it has always been, a weighted crapshoot where a lot depends on your game-over-game luck. I have seen some stuff. I have seen Virginia, the best team of its given season, lose by 20 to a 16 seed. I have seen a 15 seed make the Elite Eight. I have seen an 11 seed come within a buzzer-beater of a title game appearance. I have seen 2 seeds lose to 15 seeds in back-to-back years.

Anything is possible. That is the good thing. That is also the bad thing. Frankly, I’m uncertain where I would even land. But, whatever, it’s here, I am the clown, and I am putting the makeup on.

Maybe, just maybe, it is different this time. Or maybe the BPONE Lifers are right, nothing will ever change, and it’s actually smart to join them down in the pit.

Time to do it all over again, like an idiot.

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It is time for some bullet points but not real bullet points because Substack is not very good at the formatting side of that.

The Draw. So Tennessee gets 13-seed Louisiana Lafayette (#92 KenPom) and the winner of 5-seed Duke (#21) or 12-seed Oral Roberts (#56). At first glance I figured that’s a pretty reasonable draw. ULL is the lowest-rated 13-seed in the field, and while there’s some things they do quite well (namely rebounding and post-ups) it’s not a team that generates quality looks on jumpers at all. It’s honestly comparable to playing a less athletic Arkansas, who Tennessee handled sans Zakai Zeigler.

The Duke/Oral Roberts draw is the one that’s sticking in the craw of fans. I pointed out that Duke’s actually below average for a 5 seed and it is like I have offended God Himself. Duke’s underrated by the metrics in all likelihood but given their struggles with turnovers and lack of quality shooting it’s not a death sentence. Oral Roberts is pretty dangerous offensively but very exploitable on defense, and outside of Abmas Tennessee would be a more athletic side. I don’t know, it’s the NCAA Tournament, expect to play good basketball teams.

The rest of the region. Purdue is the 1-seed everyone wants, which is understandable. At just 65% to hit the Sweet Sixteen they’ve got the 7th-worst odds of any 1 seed since 2002 to make it. The ones below them made it four of six times, but only one made the Final Four. I have no idea what Tennessee would do with Edey but Purdue’s guards have been atrocious against ball pressure, which is Tennessee’s whole thing on the perimeter.

The 2 and 3 seeds are only of relevance if Tennessee makes the Elite Eight, a thing they’ve done once ever, but if it ends up being relevant I think they match up much better with 3-seed Kansas State than they do 2-seed Marquette.

The Stats Bracket will be out tomorrow (March 13) once I finalize a few things. It’s heavily revamped from last year’s data. With it comes a Vibes Bracket where I throw the stats out the window and simply pick who feels like the better team.

Post-Zeigler living. So Tennessee’s essentially 2-2 without Zeigler. (It’s fair to count the Arkansas game because they played 38 of those 40 minutes without him.) There’s been some good and bad, roughly summarized here:

• GOOD. Tennessee defeated a very good Arkansas team without him. They probably defeat one of Auburn/Missouri if one of the two had not had an insanely positive shooting variance day. They’ve been dominant on the boards (+11.6 per 100 chances), have played 3.5 quality offensive games out of 4 possible, and have been surprisingly good at converting their two-point attempts (54.3%). They haven’t fouled as much, either.

• BAD. Half of Tennessee’s games post-ZZ have seen defensive implosions where Tennessee’s just gotten ransacked by one specific player over and over. They aren’t forcing many turnovers right now, which is a problem for a team as reliant on shot volume as they are. Threes are honestly whatever because it’s so high-variance, but letting D’Moi Hodge and Wendell Green wreck you at the rim is shameful stuff. Also the lack of a true point guard really shows in late-game situations.

I’d like to clarify that I really do not think B.J. Edwards fundamentally changes any of that. The history of freshman point guards balling out at high-majors unless they were a five-star recruit is perilously thin, and the stuff we’ve seen from Edwards in his minutes has been chaotic. Whenever he’s on the court, he’s been targeted defensively and has a 30% TO% rate in limited action. Maybe that’s lessened if they played him more against Tennessee Tech or McNeese State but the unsatisfying answer of “he’s not good enough yet” is likely the right one. The real loss here was not getting [REDACTED] from the transfer portal because of reasons I am not allowed to speak on.

Before March, a thank you. If you’re still reading this you’re part of a special club to me. I had a bit of a personal issue in early February and took some time off; a lot of kind people reached out to make sure I was doing alright. Even with that happening this has been by far the most successful year of my writing “career,” if you can call it such. Thanks for tagging along.