I Remember How the Darkness Doubled, I Recall Lightning Struck Itself

they can, and maybe, they will

Sometimes you just know it’s gonna be One Of Those Days. And usually I know it’s gonna be One Of Those Days when I see everyone tweeting that it is, indeed, One Of Those Days.

Heat Check CBB @HeatCheckCBB

It might be another one of those days: —No. 15 Auburn lost to West Virginia by 3 —No. 13 Xavier lost to Creighton by 17 —No. 2 Alabama trails Oklahoma by 17 —No. 3 Houston trails Cincy by 11 —No. 12 Iowa State trails Mizzou by 10 —No. 16 Marquette leads DePaul by 1

And in some aspect, yeah, it was. The day started off with the same Alabama team everyone demanded be #1 getting demolished by a 2-6 Big 12 team. Then Houston nearly lost to a relatively unknown Cincinnati side. Eight of the top 10 KenPom teams have lost a game in the last two weeks. It’s one of those seasons, perhaps. That could mean anything, and as we’ve discussed a lot recently with more to come, it’s likely going to mean a nutty March.

But this is January 30, and this was January 28, and even before Tennessee tipped off against Texas it was One Of Those Days but in a good way. The Alabama and Houston results gave Tennessee a temporary sensation it has quite literally never experienced before.

Will Warren @statsbywill

For the first time ever (and at least for a few hours), Tennessee is KenPom’s number one team in America by a slim margin.

Of course it means nothing at all. It’s January 28. But even before tipoff, it felt like it Meant Something, even just a little. We’ve gone over a lot lately how the metrics seem to like this team a lot more than the eyeballs do. How its own fanbase is struggling to come to terms with the success of the team. How, on paper, it’s hard to get them to emotionally measure up to past teams people seemed to like more.

But even being #1 for that brief moment felt like a small, yet meaningful win. A reward for all the hard work they’ve done. All that was left to add to the pile - all that everyone was demanding - was that signature win.

Then the ball was tipped, and they went to work, as they always do. For them, it’s any other game, until it isn’t.

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This is not the season Texas anticipated they’d be having, unless you consider that it is basically exactly what the AP voters expected on the court. Texas entered this one 10th in the AP Poll; voters had them 12th in October. What’s happened in-between is indeed far from what they anticipated, but this is still a really good team, one who sits 10th on KenPom at the time of writing. A team that, as of writing, sits as the odds-on favorite to win the Big 12. The same Big 12 that every commentator is telling you might be the best conference ever constructed in college hoops, and frankly they may not be wrong.

Tennessee has played the two best teams in that Best Conference in America™ now. They went 2-0 and beat both by double digits. They won in very different ways: boa constricting the Kansas offense led by the future National Player of the Year runner-up, shredding and transcending the Texas defense formerly led by a coach that revolutionized how defense is played in college hoops. They’ve won with everyone available, with a starter missing, with multiple starters missing, with and without foul trouble, with and without shooting.

There have been plenty of questions about how legitimate these metrics are, about if Tennessee’s simply running up the score on overmatched teams. Given their resume not quite measuring up to a Purdue or Alabama, it’s a sensible thing to wonder. Still, all you can do is play who’s on the schedule. They’ve done that 21 times and come away with 18 wins.

Against either the best or second-best opponent on the schedule to this point, Tennessee touched a 90% win expectancy 12 minutes in and never once led by less than 10 in the final 23 minutes of the game. Their average lead was +9.4, which means you could argue Tennessee was unlucky to only win by 11. All of this against a consensus top 10 team in the best league in America.

I think the point is clear. But in case it isn’t, Bart Torvik’s got a thing called Game Score that’s essentially “on a scale of 0 to 100, what level of play was your performance reflective of?” Tennessee has 14 performances with a 95 Game Score or better, with four against Quadrant 1 & 2 opponents. The only team with more is Houston, who has 16 games that qualify. Consensus AP #1 Purdue has eight. Previous AP #2 Alabama: 12.

There’s a lot of complaints about the offense, too, which at times has been a fair thing to bark about. But you’re watching a top-12 offense over the last 10 games:

And a top-20 one since the calendar flipped to December.

Adjusted for shooting luck on Hoop-Explorer, Houston does grade out as a marginally better team, but outside of Shot Quality I haven’t seen a single site where this Tennessee team is not one of the two best in the sport. Frankly, I’m ready to believe that they really might be the best. Will that automatically result in March glory? Of course not, because Gonzaga was the best team in both of the last two seasons and has zero national titles to show for it.

It also does not matter much. This is a wonderful group of players that seems to continue evolving as the season unfolds. Flaws become ignorable; previously ignorable things become strengths; strengths become cheat codes. This was already a great team before everyone got healthy. When Josiah-Jordan James plays - AKA, when everyone is healthy - this is, full stop, The Best Damn College Basketball Team of 2023.

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Tom Verlaine led this little band called Television in the 1970s that your average American has probably never heard of. Even a lot of music heads didn’t seem to catch on until many years after the fact. But one song stood the test of time, and any casual reader of Best Songs Ever or Best Guitar Solos Ever lists has likely heard it.

Without knowing the news that Verlaine passed away this weekend at 73, I put this on absentmindedly while on the road yesterday. It’s a personal favorite song, so no surprise there, but every time I hear it I’m floored by the relative simplicity of it. It really is just three verses, a couple choruses, and that guitar solo. But then again, no song with a four-minute guitar solo that somehow could’ve easily been much longer is that simple, I guess.

The other thing that happens when I put this song on is the solo itself. It hinges on two points for me:

1. The crescendo and breakdown of the solo itself, from 8:14-8:58;

2. The final 16 seconds of the solo, from 8:58-9:14.

It’s one minute of music in all. That crescendo and breakdown is like the ramp up to March. It is how I feel right now, everything going well, everything trending happy. Everything moving in the right direction. I’d imagine that those who covered various first-time runs - 2021 Baylor, 2019 Virginia, even 2016 Villanova - felt like February to April was one long 8:14 through 8:58, just the most glorious ride of your life.

Those last 16 seconds are March for everyone else. For those whom Lady Luck has left eating dust. If the Beatles had not already written a song titled “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, Television - Verlaine specifically - may as well have stolen it with those 16 seconds, some of the most beautiful guitar work ever recorded. Every time I hear it, it’s so many things: a wistful melancholy that understands things as constructed can’t last but the memories they brought can’t be forgotten. It’s 2022 Michigan after the SEC Tournament win. 2019 Purdue after the comeback and #1 ranking. 2018 Loyola after the program renaissance. 2010 Michigan State after the first Elite Eight ever. 2007 Ohio State, 2000 North Carolina, so on.

I’ve heard those 16 seconds as long as I’ve been writing, as long as I’ve been living. If I hear them again in March or even April, that’s fine; what has occurred from November 7 to January 30 is as impressive a run as Tennessee’s men’s basketball program has ever uncorked.

Frankly, I might be very stupid, but I think 2023 brings you the first 44 seconds for the first time in a long time. This is a year where everyone’s got obvious flaws, but Tennessee’s seem to be moving away game-by-game. The team couldn’t make twos? Well, now they’re 19th in 2PT% since Christmas and 12th post-Maryland fiasco. Had long scoring droughts last year? Only have six through 21 games this year, below the national average.

And I swear, I swear, they’re just different. There’s something about it. There’s something about deflecting a pass, sprinting 40 feet to the other end of the floor, diving for a loose ball, getting fouled, and reacting like you just hit a key three to go up five in the Elite Eight with a minute left.

That’s culture.

Despite all the bad stuff and the fact this can easily go wrong, I’ve bought in. You have my full and complete attention. All of us, collectively standing beneath the Marquee Moon, no longer hesitating.

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Folks, it is time for some

ANALYSIS

In bullet-point form.

• Yes there was another game that was played whatever. The Georgia game was remarkable in that Tennessee won by 29 points and it…kinda felt like Tennessee could have won by 40+? Tennessee went 7-for-18 on layups, only two of which were blocked, while hitting just 4 of their 17 catch-and-shoot three-point attempts. Simultaneously, Tennessee was a little lucky Georgia only went 4-for-22 on threes. A fair score was probably the same margin, just with more points.

• Game flow. So Texas tied it at 17 with 10:44 left in the first half. They went on to score a total of 22 points in the next 18 minutes; Tennessee scored 44. That’s your ballgame. Tennessee went the opening 2:41 without scoring; they never went longer than 3:03 in this game without hitting a field goal. That’s frankly what you’re looking for at this point against a top-10 opponent.

• Shot selection. Texas is well-known for a couple of positive things defensively: forcing a large amount of turnovers and forcing tons of bad pull-up jumpers. Tennessee - who, again, has displayed some malfunctions at times - posted Texas’s fourth-lowest defensive TO% of the season to go with scoring 18 points on 14 pull-up jumpers. That’s how it’s done.

• The Nkamhoua impact. Obviously 27 points on 12-for-15 shooting is, you know, wild. But it was even stranger how vast the difference between him being in and out was. Tennessee scored 73 points in 53 possessions with Nkamhoua in; they scored 9 in 12 with him out. That hasn’t often been the case with Nkamhoua against high-end competition. If this is the start of him turning over a new leaf, that’s gigantic for Tennessee.

• Ball screens are en vogue. An update from the preview on Friday:

  • Number of P&R possessions as charted by Synergy, first 16 games: 102 (6.4 per game)

  • Number of P&R possessions, last four games: 60 (15 per game)

  • Number of P&R possessions against Texas: 16 (16 points scored)

That’s a good sign; Barnes and staff appear to be getting really comfortable with these sets involving Zeigler and a big (usually Nkamhoua). It obviously helps when said big is having a great game, but look at how much attention Nkamhoua draws on this quick-run ball-screen and how easily it frees Zeigler up to attack the rim:

If Tennessee is going to unlock a functional ball-screen offense to go with everything else they are already doing, this really is going to be a top 15-20 offense by season’s end.

• A frontcourt emerges. And that frontcourt is Josiah-Jordan James plus Center Roulette. Here’s a chart:

That’s a rolling graph of how many possessions in each game Tennessee’s ran out a lineup featuring James and one (but only one) of Nkamhoua, Plavsic, Aidoo, and Awaka. Texas represents the second-highest number of possessions all season at 46, or 71% of the game. Over the last five games, Tennessee’s ran out these lineups exactly 50% of the time. The funny thing is that they’re basically exactly as efficient as the other lineups, just with a better offense and worse defense.

• Another chart. And oh boy is it a funny one.

  

• What being #1 in KenPom means for seeding, historically. As a reminder, KenPom has data on February 1 of every year dating back to 1997, meaning we have 25 seasons of work to draw on. Houston doesn’t play again until Thursday and Tennessee won’t play until Wednesday night, meaning they’ll wake up on February 1 still at #1 on Ken’s site. Here’s what this has meant for seeding from 1997-present:

  • 1 seeds (out of a possible 25): 19

  • 2 seeds: 4

  • 3 seeds: 1 (2013 Florida)

  • 4 seeds: 1 (2003 Louisville)

Tennessee’s obviously going to be an odds-on favorite to get their first 1-seed in program history. Torvik’s TourneyCast predictive tool, though imperfect, gives Tennessee a 53% shot of getting it. INCC Stats says 56%. Team Rankings says 80% (!) which feels far too aggressive. I think somewhere around 60% is fair.

• What being #1 in KenPom means for the Tournament, historically. Same thing as above, but for NCAAT outcomes. I advise not reading much into this, because there’s a lot of season left, but this is what you’d generally expect for a team entering February as the metrics #1.

  • Champions (of a possible 25): 4

  • Runner-up: 5

  • Final Four: 5

  • Elite Eight: 3

  • Sweet Sixteen: 5

  • Round of 32: 3 (2000 Cincinnati, 2003 Louisville, 2010 Kansas)

So: some not-so-desirable outcomes there, in that roughly a third (8 of 25) failed to touch the Elite Eight. But the rosy look at this is that a majority (14 of 25) made the Final Four. Considering that the average 1 seed makes the Final Four 37% of the time, 56% is a nice boost. I imagine this is a deal where you get whatever you want to get from it.