Back in November this was tracking towards being the big non-conference game of the season.
And in some aspect, it’s still pretty darn big. The AP Poll is a heavily flawed construct, but it has Tennessee 4th (2nd in KenPom) and Texas 10th (9th in KP). It’s the first top-10 matchup of the 2023 calendar year; it’s the first non-conference top 10 matchup post-Christmas since COVID hit. So: still a big deal. There are just some…uh, how do I word it, extenuating circumstances and such that have harmed one of the two teams involved.
Texas enters with a gaudy 17-3 record (same as Tennessee) and an even gaudier 8-1 record in games decided by 10 or less (uh, not like Tennessee). Their defense is trending backwards at the same time their offense is trending towards the top 5 nationally. I don’t know where they go from here, but they enter Knoxville as a fascinating story and a serious Big 12 title contender.
BELOW THE LINE: I don’t believe the Texas orange is all that bad. sorry. definitely better on a football/baseball field, of course ($)
Texas offense
The hallmarks of the Chris Beard Rodney Terry offense have been a lot like the former hallmarks of the Rick Barnes offense. There’s plenty of off-ball screens, basket cuts, and mid-range jumpers. Texas is extremely good at hitting them, as the graphic shows, so that’s fine. I mostly mention this up top because this is a very rare game where you actually don’t want Texas to take a bunch of midrange twos, or at least you don’t want a specific pair to do so.
Anyway, this is where we note how Texas has changed since the day Chris Beard stopped coaching the team. On is December 12 - present; Off is before.
Some obvious luck adjustments are in play here, but a pretty clear standout - to me at least - is that Texas has leaned more on the midrange two and become 2018-19 Tennessee levels of good at hitting it. The main guy in this regard is Minnesota transfer Marcus Carr (17.6 PPG), who is a blistering 49% shooter on midrange twos and 41.5% from deep. Any possession where Carr takes a jumper is a bad one for opponents. Synergy has him as a 43% jump shooter; considering that Texas is rebounding 29.5% of their own misses, that means that 60% of the time Carr shoots, it either goes in or Texas gets it back.
Carr’s impact is felt on both ends of the court, the big one being that Texas is a much more jumper-reliant offense when he’s out there. As we’ve shown: not necessarily a bad thing. He’s also the leader of Texas’s terrific transition attack, which has enabled them to keep pace in a bonkers Big 12 as their defense gets a little worse each time out. Relative to the national landscape Texas runs an average amount of ball screens, with Carr and Iowa State transfer Tyrese Hunter (10.3 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 3 APG) being the main ball-handlers.
Hunter’s a fascinating player who’s like the anti-Carr. Most non-ISU fans probably first got him on their radar when he ate LSU alive in the Round of 64 last March, going 7-for-11 on mostly stepback threes. The problem with having that mental image of Hunter is that, outside of that game, he’s a 27% three-point shooter in college. Hunter takes a lot of jumpers but he’s simply not a good shooter. He is a solid passer, though, and he’s pretty dangerous heading downhill.
The other guy you’re not going to want to see pull up from 15 feet is Timmy Allen (10.7 PPG, 5.3 RPG). Allen, weirdly, is a poor deep shooter; he’s 29-for-116 (25%) for his career. But put him in the midrange and he’s unstoppable. Allen is an absurd 32-for-57 (56%) on midrange jumpers this season. Given his role as a small-ball 4 in Texas’s offensive system, he’s required to hit some sort of jumper to provide appropriate spacing. He hits these twos at such a rate that any coach would encourage it.
The final double-digit scorer is Sir’Jabari Rice (10 PPG), who aside from having a genuinely amazing name is just your standard solid small forward. I would not argue that Rice does much of anything spectacularly, but he’s always there and gets to the line with a high frequency. Career 33.5% deep shooter and at 51% on twos. I do not recommend fouling him, as he’s shooting 86% from the line this year.
Texas has a very strict nine-man rotation that hasn’t changed before or after the firing. Dillon Mitchell (6.5 PPG, 5 RPG) is the center and is lethal at the rim but valueless otherwise on offense. Dylan Disu (7.4 PPG), who you remember from Vanderbilt, is still doing a lot of his Vandy-era things: great at the rim, not great elsewhere. Christian Bishop (6.9 PPG), same thing. Brock Cunningham (4.8 PPG) and Arterio Morris (5.6 PPG) are the only real shooting options off the bench, though I trust Cunningham (career 36% shooter, 46% from deep last two years) more than Morris (30%).
Texas has had a bizarre season for obvious reasons, but they’re deeply fascinating to watch. If you squinted hard enough, you’d see some remnants of 2018-19 Tennessee here. (It only makes sense that Rodney Terry worked with Barnes for years, as did assistant Chris Ogden.) As their defense trends downward, their offense is becoming one of the most fearsome in America, only seemingly stopped by bad shooting nights or poor outings on the boards. Honestly? That sounds familiar.
CHART!
Texas defense
While the Longhorn offense is a joy to watch, this has become a chore for Texas fans. The day Beard went on administrative leave before never returning, his defense apparently departed with him. Even adjusting for shooting luck, they’ve gone from playing like a top-five defense to a borderline top-75 unit.
The minutes haven’t changed. The personnel hasn’t changed. I don’t think the system has really changed dramatically, either. But nothing here is firing on all cylinders. It’s like everyone is just…kind of discombobulated?
Which is totally understandable because these kids absolutely did not sign up for this. It’s hard to blame the coaching staff either, because this is a pretty impossible situation to deal with in real time. But the post-Beard life for Texas has been stark in how immediately you can tell the difference.
Texas forces fewer mid-range twos, commits far more fouls, gives up a much worse hit rate on twos, and allows far more assists. They’re not forcing nearly as many late-clock isolation possessions. All told, teams simply seem to have exploited a combination of a system they’re familiar with (a few other no-middle defenses have lost significant steam this year in the Big 12 as well) and a really tired collection of players.
It’s not just one thing, either. Texas went from an 84th-percentile ball-screen defense in 2021-22 to the 57th-percentile this year. From 55th-percentile in isolation D to 10th. From 58th-percentile in defending cuts to 37th. Essentially everything has regressed. Some of this could reasonably be personnel-based. Texas never had a truly elite ball-stopper under Beard, but a year ago, they had Andrew Jones, a very gritty guard who led the team in steals and graded out as a tremendous ball-screen and isolation defender.
The main ball-stopper this year is Carr, a player who’s a fine defender but not quite as special as Jones. You’re unfortunately able to see it in how often Carr’s given up drives to the paint.
Because there’s no elite ball-stopper, you need a great rim protector on the back end, which Texas does kind of have in Dylan Disu, who blocks 10.2% of two-point attempts when he’s on the floor. The problem is Disu cannot stay on the floor because he commits 5.9 fouls per 40. The plurality of center minutes go Disu’s way, but when Disu leaves the court the impact is pretty notable in one highly specific area: Texas somehow fouls way more. None of their center options can stay on the court for very long; the ones that can are not serious rim protectors.
No elite-ball stopper and no rim-protector lead to those 2PT% numbers nose-diving. I’m not totally convinced that Texas is suddenly a terrible three-point defense; sometimes a lot of teams just get shooting luck against you. They still force a lot of pull-up jumpers and don’t allow many catch-and-shoot threes, which may be a problem for a Tennessee team very reliant on them. Still, based on the shots forced, teams would expect to shoot 32.7% from deep against Texas. They’re at 32.5% on the full season. In particular, teams have found ways to really dice Texas apart in ball-screen coverage from the perimeter.
Just way too much ball-watching, it seems. I still think Rodney Terry can sustain Texas’s season, and perhaps unsurprisingly a team with a lot of talent on it is still has a 31% chance of getting at least a share of the Big 12 regular season title, per Torvik. But it’s hard to look at this team and feel like it’s the same, or even feel like it’s what we thought it would be in October.
How Tennessee matches up
As with most Tennessee games, and particularly in a game like this, Rick Barnes is going to largely stick to what his team knows best: lots of off-ball screens, basket cuts, catch-and-shoot threes, and work done in the post. All of that is good; I am especially interested to see how Texas, a team that really hasn’t faced an offense as dedicated to off-ball screens as Tennessee’s, handles keeping up with Vescovi and company. It could also be a game to test Tennessee’s new interest in ball screens.
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)
That’s a not-insignificant jump. 15 per game is still well below the D-1 average, but it’s not next-to-last in D-1 like Tennessee was until recently. (God bless Bellarmine for holding down 363rd like it’s their life’s mission.) Minus the part where Purdue has a literal giant at center, Tennessee kinda looks like Purdue. I watched Purdue play Texas last March; it did not go well for the Longhorns. I doubt Tennessee attacks the post as much as Purdue did for obvious reasons, but a scenario where Tennessee continues to get the opposing frontcourt involved on the perimeter is something I’m eyeing intensely.
Tennessee’s also going to have to get comfortable hitting some tougher shots in this one. I’m pretty steadfast in believing the Texas defense is not what it was but it’s still a unit that forces a lot of pull-up jumpers and tries very hard to not allow catch-and-shoot attempts. Tennessee is much more oriented towards the latter because that’s the more efficient shot, which I find reasonable.
The most consistent way teams have found to produce open threes against Texas is going to feel pretty familiar: hitting the paint, whether by pass or by dribble, and sending the ball back out beyond the three-point line. Iowa State, a team that is very much not known for its offense, went for 1.18 PPP against Texas two weeks ago doing that exact thing. If Tennessee doesn’t screw around offensively and consistently touches the paint, drawing Texas inwards, it’s going to open up the perimeter. All you can ask for is a good process.
Defensively, this is a difficult ask. Texas rates as the best offense Tennessee has played all season, per KenPom, thanks to Arizona tumbling down the rankings a bit. No team they’ll play all season is better at hitting midrange twos, and while Texas’s perimeter pressure is pretty middling (26.5% of points from three, even less than Ole Miss), their work from two against a pretty difficult schedule is impressive. This is a group that won’t turn it over and will hit free throws if you send them to the line.
However, it’s reassuring that the defenses most similar to Tennessee’s - Iowa State and Texas Tech - both held Texas to relatively unremarkable offensive days. Both had similar gameplans: let Texas take as many jumpers as they’re willing to, but force them to pull up off the dribble instead of settling in for catch-and-shoots. It frankly worked really well. Iowa State and Texas Tech combined to allow just 25 shot attempts at the rim against a Texas offense that averages 23.6 a game otherwise.
To me, these two teams straight-up said “we don’t think you can beat us from three.” It’s a dangerous game to play in 2023, but it’s a game that worked. Texas is capable of great things from deep - they’ve hit 10+ threes in five games - but they’re also capable of what I’d politely call a Texan Turd. Nine times this season, Texas has hit five or fewer threes in a game. It’s not a team that wants to win from three. They want to win inside the perimeter and in the paint.
As far as we’ve seen, and as far as we know from career numbers, Marcus Carr is the only guy that can consistently kill you from three. (Brock Cunningham can but he only attempts two threes a game.) Let Hunter shoot. Let Morris shoot. Let Rice shoot. Let Disu shoot. Heck, make Allen hit a three. If this backfires, it backfires, but it seems like a far more reasonable process than letting a team that sits 14th in 2PT% take a lot of twos. Also, drain the clock.
ESPN calling this a midterm exam feels apt. Tennessee’s been hard at work in study hall against weaker competition; Texas sometimes has been and sometimes has goofed off. Let’s see who gets the higher grade.
Expected starters and rotations
Everyone is available for both teams, as far as I know.
Key matchups
Marcus Carr vs. Zakai Zeigler. I think we’re all generally on the same page in considering this the matchup. On paper I do not love a 5’9” guard against a significantly taller guard who generates a ton of points from pull-up jumpers. At the same time, said 5’9” guard is a legitimate Defensive Player of the Year candidate for a good reason. Easily could be a matchup where both score 15+.
Timmy Allen vs. Josiah-Jordan James. This may also be Julian Phillips territory, but James’ body type is the superior matchup on paper. Allen is a good passer and tremendous foul drawer who loves to operate on 15-foot jumpers; it’s a little like JJJ if JJJ couldn’t shoot threes.
Tyrese Hunter vs. Santiago Vescovi. Texas starts two point guards which is not unlike what Tennessee does. Vescovi’s obviously a far superior shooter to Hunter, though. Hunter grades out as Texas’s worst defender, which is a surprising regression after he was a good defender for Iowa State last year but could be a sample size/post-Beard issue.
Three things to watch for
Foul disparity. Tennessee’s capable of committing quite a few fouls of their own, but this Texas team is the most foul-happy side they’ve played since…Alcorn State? If Disu gets in early foul trouble or Allen picks up two quick fouls the offensive side will get easy pretty fast.
Paint points. Texas is going to score more than Tennessee on mid-range twos, that’s no shocker. But can Texas outpace Tennessee if Texas has no great ball-stoppers and their one shot-blocker is a foul machine? On the other end, it’s a great two-point offense versus a great two-point defense, which usually washes out to be an exact 50/50 matchup. Tennessee also figures to have a real rebounding edge here. We’ll see.
If the jumpers go in or if they don’t. Applies to both sides. If this is like the Iowa State/Texas Tech games and Tennessee forces Texas to go 6-for-23 from deep, this is obviously a Tennessee win. If they force the shots but Texas is on, then the backup plan is less satisfying. Goes for Tennessee as well in that Texas likely does not want to funnel guys to the rim for fear of it being a foul parade.
Three predictions
Tennessee gets Texas in transition 2-3 times after made baskets because Texas simply doesn’t get home in time;
Tennessee makes up for the Kentucky disaster by shooting a respectable (i.e., 35%) number from deep;
Tennessee 72, Texas 63.