Show Me My Opponent, 2023-24: Georgia Southern
all of the excitement an 8.4 KenPom FanMatch™ score can generate
Tennessee welcomes the Georgia Southern Eagles to town, who are one of three universities this year attempting to fix their basketball programs by hiring a Nate Oats assistant to run Alabama’s system. Let’s see how it’s going for everybody.
Bryan Hodgson, Arkansas State: 3-7, #194 KenPom
Antoine Pettway, Kennesaw State: 7-3, #222 KenPom
Charlie Henry, Georgia Southern: 0-9, #330 KenPom
Ah well, takes time and whatnot. The odds that all three will succeed are slim, but at least one of the three is going to work out. (It’s Hodgson.) The results for poor Charlie Henry have been brutal thus far. 0-9 is 0-9, and only two of the games have been close at all. These guys have spent the first month of the season getting hammered: by 22 to Georgia Tech, by 18 to East Carolina, by 31 to Michigan State.
This is presumed to be no different, if not worse. Tennessee has had one (1) true home struggle with a buy team in the last four years, a random Black Friday affair in 2021 against a Tennessee Tech team that shot 43% from three while Tennessee shot 26%. Weird games like that happen; it would take a historically weird game for this to be interesting to anyone. The good news: tickets are cheap, and it’s always 70 degrees and shiny in Thompson-Boling Arena.
BELOW THE LINE ($): a preview