No New York
it's the money
December 7: #7 Tennessee 84, Eastern Kentucky 49 (8-1)
December 11: #7 Tennessee 56, #13 Maryland 53 (9-1)
There’s a compilation album out there from 1978 called No New York. You can listen to it here; I suggest that unless you really like skronk and noise and music that sounds like a car crash, you avoid it.
I am saying this about an album I think is Somewhat Good and Somewhat Important, by the way. No New York was an effective document of a time and place that does not exist anymore: late-70s New York, when city violence was rounding into its to-come peak and you could live there for pretty cheap. What it attracted was a bunch of weirdos who had fascinating music ideas - Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, etc. - and a lot of “let’s try this and see how it sounds.” Unsurprisingly, the one subjectively listenable thing you hear in the first 15 minutes is a James Brown cover.
I don’t listen to this for pleasure, and truth be told, I think I’ve only heard it from start to finish once. Skronk and whatnot - the official name is “no wave” which does indeed sum it up - is far from my preferred listening style. But: it is important, it is useful, and it produced a couple of very important people to independent music in the years to come. You could argue the effect was a net positive: garbage music played by people who could not and did not want to play their instruments correctly that nonetheless serves as a time capsule that should be protected. If you know of Sonic Youth or the B-52s or Suicide or The Fall or - and I’m not joking - the Beastie Boys, you have No New York to thank. But you don’t have to listen to it.
I saw the sun and the blue sky yesterday for the first time in a week. I debated on comparing the young men in Tennessee orange to a light box, but that feels…extremely un-timely today. We need an appropriate time capsule of what we’ve witnessed, both in December 2022 and December 2021. So let’s talk basketballs and money and The Problem With New York.
Friend of the Substack Grant Ramey sent me this photo prior to the game; I think it was that exact point that I scaled the Watchability expectations for this one down to ground level.
That’s the Spalding Legacy TF-1000. This is normally not of note in any way, shape, or form, other than the fact it was the basketball used in last year’s Act of God game between Tennessee and Texas Tech. That game produced the single worst combined shooting performance I believe I’ve ever seen in college basketball, or at least between two really good teams that both ended up being 3 seeds.
Spalding was once the standard in basketball, holding a deal with the NBA from 1983 to 2021. If you’re of a certain age, your high school basketball team almost certainly used an older edition of the TF-1000 that looked like this. These days, I do not immediately know of any college basketball team that uses a Spalding ball for home games. Basically everyone is contracted with either Nike or Adidas now; those who are not (like Maryland, actually) use a Wilson Evolution. (Admittedly kind of surprising given Maryland’s long-standing Under Armour ties.)
So when that picture came through, I sighed, because it’s the latest example of the absurdity of…well, balls. This Myron Medcalf story in 2019 underlined the absurdity that college teams face throughout a season. If you’re Tennessee, for example, odds are that you’ll play with as many as five different basketball manufacturers in a given season: Adidas, Nike, Under Armour, Spalding, and Wilson. The NBA: one manufacturer. Nearly every other basketball league or community in the world: one manufacturer.
This will never change as long as schools have separate contracts with separate groups and the money retains its status as money, but…well, sorry, it’s frustrating. I don’t have time to go through a decade’s worth of data on which teams use which balls, but helpfully, Spalding themselves tweets every time their ball is used somewhere. Let’s see how teams have shot with that ball in 2022-23, compared to Synergy’s data on the rest of college basketball.
Games in which I can confirm a TF-1000 was used (13 games, 601 jump shots): 29.8% FG% on all jumpers, 27.5% 3PT%
All other regular season tournaments: 34.7% FG% on all jumpers, 33.3% 3PT%
All other regular season play: 34.3% FG% on all jumpers, 33.5% 3PT%
This excludes the horrifying two-game event last year in New York, when Tennessee, Texas Tech, Syracuse, and Villanova - three of which were 3 seeds or higher! - combined to hit 23.9% of their jumpers. There are as many examples of games where teams combined to shoot 20% or worse on jumpers with this ball at a neutral site as there are games where they shot 30% or better.
All of this can be avoided. Someone - preferably Rick Barnes or Kevin Willard - has to realize this cannot keep going. We have 13 games of data now this season played at neutral sites with this ball. The results are that teams are shooting 5-6% worse with it compared to teams likely using literally any other ball - generally a Wilson or Nike ball, from what I’ve seen - at neutral sites. A total of two games of the 13 with this ball have produced a jumper FG% above that of the national average of 34.7% at neutral sites. (Torvik says 33.1% at neutral sites, which is still almost 6% above the figure we’ve found.)
If neutral-site shooting were a problem everywhere, then I think I would be more lenient here. Really, if the shooting at Barclays Center (or anywhere) itself were a problem, then we could have a different discussion. But we have data there, too, albeit minimal. They played a four-team event called the Empire Classic at Barclays last month, featuring Syracuse, St. John’s, Richmond, and Temple, all top 100 teams. They combined to shoot 34.3% from deep on 169 attempts. Guess what ball they used?
That’s a Wilson ball, which, you know, is the manufacturer of the NBA’s ball in a game that’s being played in an NBA arena.
This cannot sustain. I think it’s inherently wrong to invite teams to an unfamiliar arena, hand them an unfamiliar ball that one Tennessee player said “felt and shot like an outdoor ball” last December, and expect this to work. There were several occurrences during the game yesterday where a softer ball (and, I guess, softer rims) would have led to more makes. This should not be happening in a game that has actual consequences for both teams involved.
Because this is the NCAA, because this is college athletics, and because money exists, I expect we’ll have this exact same conversation next December. For my sanity, and for yours, pray it’s not Tennessee, and pity the next team who has to deal with this completely unnecessary governor on their golf cart.
The problem with all of this happening is that it distracts from a game where both fanbases should frankly come away very happy. Tennessee defeated a top 20 KenPom team on a neutral court in a game where Josiah-Jordan James and Jonas Aidoo were out for different reasons while their best shooter, Santiago Vescovi, went 1-for-9. Maryland was at full strength and took a lot of good-ish shots. More of those probably go in with a ball that doesn’t suck. You could say the same for Tennessee. Shot Quality, for the second year in a row, has produced a graphic that will make viewers of this game want to punch drywall.
Imagine that game, played at either Tennessee or Maryland’s home arena, where these two teams that are really good and really lovable groups combined for 155 points in a shootout. Instead, we got yet another slopfest that Tennessee probably felt over-prepared for given their experience last December.
Still, there are positives. There is the sudden emergence of Tobe Awaka, arguably Tennessee’s best player in his first-ever college game in his home state. There were the clutch late-game efforts by Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack. There was Santiago Vescovi, running 500 MPH on defense and forcing ball denials nearly every possession. There was Olivier Nkamhoua, picking up five giant offensive rebounds on a day where he shot poorly.
But mostly, there was all of Tennessee on a day where everything that could’ve gone wrong did. You shot horrifically using a ball you’ll never use again this season. You were missing a starter, a key bench piece, and your best shooter is pretty obviously not playing at 100%. Your best player this season shot 1-for-10 and had more combined fouls and turnovers (7) than points (6). 38% of your team finished the game in foul trouble. You went 11-for-21 at the foul line.
And you won.
And at that point, you begin to think that maybe these guys are more than just one or two players. That they are more than the sum of their parts. That they can produce outcomes so unfeasible and so incomprehensible that you have to disconnect yourself from reality to log them into a mental filing cabinet. That you can run back the Act of God game, but this time it’s a win.
Maybe they are a light box, after all. Maybe they can sustain East Tennessee through this winter, or through a week where you don’t see the sun. It will not always be pretty, as I think we’re all well aware of at this point. Simultaneously, it results in a lot of wins, the #3 team in KenPom, and a team that seems pretty capable of taking advantage in a year where the #1 team in KenPom entered the season unranked and the #1 AP team is currently unranked itself. There are worse things than rolling the dice and opting in.
As long as these guys say No New York going forward (though the East Regional is there this year), then I think they’ll be fine. Just say no to the skronk and the noise and the Spalding Legacy WTF-1000. You do not have to do that to yourselves. I promise.
ODDS AND ENDS
Given that we just dumped 1,800+ words on one game and the other one is a 35-point blowout no one will remember, this is the Miscellaneous Notes section.
3PT% variance both ways. I mean, Tennessee is not going to hold teams to 20.2% from deep for an entire season. That’s pretty insane. But I do think their perimeter aggressiveness is forcing teams to take a lot of bad shots. If they ended up at 29% or so at year’s end I wouldn’t be surprised. Offensively, again, same team that has a career 3PT% of 36.4% and shot 40% over the final 20 games last season. They did shoot 33.3% against Maryland, FWIW, and haven’t had a positive outlier game yet like they did last year (5 outings of 50% or better).
I do think the rim is a problem though. Tennessee’s hitting 55.4% of attempts at the rim, per Synergy. That’s not outright awful, but it currently ranks 218th in America. The only non-bigs with a >55% FG% at the rim are Vescovi and Key, who have a combined 18 attempts. In particular Julian Phillips has got to get way more efficient down low, as he sits at 41.5%. (Because I will be asked: Nkamhoua is at 64.7%.)
Rebounding is real. I am convinced. Tennessee’s now played 10 games, half of which were against Quadrant 1 or 2 competition. In all but one, they’ve posted a 33.3% OREB% or better. That’s extremely impressive, and when paired with all the free throws that produces, it gives Tennessee a huge hedge on nights where they’re shooting poorly that they didn’t have in 2021-22.
The best team in basketball is likely no one, unless it really is Connecticut, but I have my doubts that a roster with a career 3PT% of 35% is going to shoot 39.4% for an entire year. Houston seems like a fine candidate but they don’t have the Hello, We Are Number One, Bow Down vibe like Gonzaga did the last couple years. Purdue is AP #1 but has been really lucky to not lose twice. Alabama looks dangerous but has the 12th-worst turnover margin in all of college basketball. Texas likely lost their head coach for good today. Beyond that…uh…
Which means that if I were to have a ballot I’d probably go 1. UConn, 2. Purdue, 3. Houston, 4. Tennessee, 5. Virginia, but there are probably eight teams worth considering for the top five, so who knows.
On Chris Beard. First and foremost, this sounds horrifying, and if it is true, Beard should be dismissed immediately and sent to prepare for jail time. There’s something to waiting for the full story to come out, obviously, but in the meantime, I have some pretty extreme doubts he’ll coach again for Texas this season, if ever.
On Mike Leach. At the risk of being wrong, it doesn’t seem like Mike Leach may be with us humans for much longer. In some aspect, that feels right. No coach has had a more unconventional, yet successful career than the Pirate, who could truly only be formed in American college football. If this really is it, I am going to miss him immensely. No other coach in college football or basketball matches his unique personality or tone while also having such an immense impact on how offense evolved in the sport.
On Grant Wahl. I don’t think you need a round-up from me on all of the good pieces surrounding Wahl’s death. All I can add is that the first time I remember caring about the USMNT (and then the USWNT) was early 2010, in the leadup to the World Cup. The first US-based soccer writer I can remember reading was Grant Wahl, and I knew who he was because I remembered him being a college basketball reporter for Sports Illustrated. He changed the game in so many ways. An immensely sad thing to see happen.