Somewhere in the Desert There's a Forest
returnal
There’s this part of America I think about an awful lot. I have yet to actually go to it, because it’s an 11-hour drive from my house and a four-hour drive from the nearest family housing I know of, but maybe later this year I’ll get there. It is in Michigan, and it is called Sleeping Bear Dunes.
The little specks there are people you see running up or down the dunes, which is a thing you can do. Running up to the top seems just as scary as attempting to not fall and roll down to the bottom, but if hundreds of thousands of people do it every year, a grown man is presumably capable of it. More appealing to me is that expanse you see above. A world, endless, ahead of you; many unknowns, but many opportunities. A never-ending expanse of blue, as you stare at it from what looks like Arizona.
Part of the appeal here is that it is a place I’ve never been to. My dad never went despite spending 30+ years in Michigan. I know no one personally that’s gone. Seeing that picture above, the desire to go immediately, despite all that I know about Upper Midwest Winter, is quite intense. As with everything else in life, the thing I have to do is wait. Eventually, that day will come, perhaps at a time when I’m no longer expecting it.
It’s been a year since my best friend, my grandfather, passed away. I haven’t been sure how or why or what to write about that or if I even wanted to. The concept of trauma porn and ensuring that everyone knows precisely how affected I am by said loss seems pretty annoying, frankly. It’s a fan service thing that no fan should have serious interest in. But I talked to my grandmother yesterday and she wanted a link to this via Facebook Messenger, so here you go.
There have been two quite difficult aspects of the last year that I’ve had to mentally grapple with related to this. The first is a chair that sits unused at what used to be his computer. My dear perfect grandmother has said many times I’m free to use said computer, to sit in that seat, to help figure out the things she still needs help figuring out. But a lot of the time it hasn’t felt right. To sit there makes it feel a little too real most of the time, because when I used to sit there I’d look to my right and he’d be in his chair.
The other aspect is fandom. I think I’ve made it relatively clear in the past my background: I grew up a two-pronged college sports fan because my dad went to Michigan but my grandfather was a Tennessee diehard. I care for both because I am a toxic person that desires ultimate pain through sports, but I only have a degree from Tennessee. More than anyone in life, my grandfather was the reason I moved to Knoxville, despite how much it bummed him out that I was not of the small town any longer.
The point of the story is this: for a lifetime, whenever I’ve viewed a Tennessee sporting event, mostly basketball, I’ve thought about what my grandfather and I could discuss from it. I talked about a month ago on figuring out how to carve that new path with my grandmother. It is going well. But I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t have a grandfather-sized hole in my heart this season in particular.
The stretch run of the 2021-22 Tennessee men’s basketball season was a joy to cover, to write about, to view. But what I didn’t realize until after it was over was how deeply I tied that team to my grandfather. He got sick in December; he passed away in February. Every game felt like leaping into a world where he was still alive. Where we could still talk like we used to. A place that I felt him as much as I felt every point.
When that loss to Michigan happened in the Round of 32, I simply tried to go quiet for a few days. The actual loss itself didn’t really hurt that much as a quasi-fan, quasi-writer; it was more that I was sad I couldn’t write about that team anymore because they were fun to write about. The loss itself was less about seeing Kennedy Chandler sob in Juwan Howard’s arms than it was realizing that team - that specific team - was not going to give me that portal to jump into anymore. A place where I could get away from the world and all its misgivings.
A year on, I feel healthier. More in touch with what makes me a happy person. I still think about him every day, but in the same way that Dale Earnhardt Jr. once described going from thinking about missing his dad every few minutes to every few hours. It’s a better place to be in.
But I felt the portal crack open all over again, when my grandmother unprompted brought up how my grandfather used to print off my articles for her and bring them to her, because she is not very good at computer. And then it was I who was Kennedy Chandler and my wife had to play the role of Juwan Howard, Comforter. Alas, we all end up looking a mess at some point.
The fun part about being a very very semi-professional writer is that you just type a bunch of words into a box and you hope they somehow make sense. I am under no delusion that these words will tie in whatsoever to the main role of this site, which is to discuss Tennessee basketball.
I haven’t felt like discussing Tennessee basketball for a few weeks now, even before the cold streak. The further I get out from last February, the harder a time I have describing myself as a “fan” and the easier I do as an “observer.” But I think those of you who reached out over recent weeks to check in on me - and there were so many I cannot thank them all - have helped pull the energy back from the abyss and fully back into this project.
One draft of this featured a message to detractors, haters, losers, et al., but it does not feel appropriate, especially on Lent Week. Instead: let’s try this again. I am Will Warren, I write about Tennessee and NCAA basketball, and I am at your service, five days a week, from here until the season ends. It’s time to let it rip. Stretch run, baby.
Analysis in the form of BULLETS! Of the mostly legal kind. Though on Substack I’ve decided against bullets for this section because I’m not in love with how it formats HTML-wise. Anyway.
The case for optimism. Step one: be a fan of a different team. Step two: leave town. Step three: If steps one and two did not work, try some perspective. Tennessee is 20-7, top 6 in every metrics system, and while six of those seven losses have been of an extraordinarily frustrating variety (I think the Arizona loss was fine, obviously), Tennessee owns wins over the current #2, #7, and #11 teams in KenPom. I think only Baylor and Arizona - two similarly flawed teams - can say they have more? I’m not sure. Either way, we know that the highs are pretty darn high.
Also, this is the #1 defense in America that’s seen some serious three-point regression as of late and has remained the #1 defense in America. That I don’t think you can really be mad at. This is also, statistically, one of the two most chaotic years on record for top 15 AP Poll teams and an unusual year that displays a smaller margin between the top and the bottom.
Plus: for a fan base that constantly oscillates between “we like winning!” and “but not if it’s before March,” maybe Tennessee is finally operating like a lot of teams in that their best is yet to come. I have seen far, far worse teams make Final Fours or national title games or, if you prefer, Elite Eights. This is a sport where a 15 seed made an Elite Eight within the last calendar year. It is a deeply, deeply stupid tournament to decide a champion that Tennessee has undoubtedly had bad luck in for its entire existence. Maybe this is finally the year they have good luck. I don’t know, man, nihilism isn’t for me. I choose to believe.
But.
The case for pessimism. I think after the hilarious Auburn home win I wrote about how this was statistically likely to be the bottom for Tennessee’s offense, which ranked 58th or so on KenPom at the time. That may not be the case, as they’re now up to 67th at the time of writing. Some of that is obviously impacted by missing both of Josiah-Jordan James and Julian Phillips for the last week, but…I mean, this Kentucky defense stinks. I know it stinks. You couldn’t get into the 60s against that defense?
Plus, the record of unbalanced teams in March in general is suboptimal. For The Field of 68 this weekend I compiled a list of teams similar to 2022-23 Baylor, who entered Saturday ranking #1 in offense and #78 in defense. Everyone in Knoxville wants the team to suck at defense (I guess?) but be awesome offensively. That’s not really proven to be any better:
Of course, if you flip it for Tennessee, it’s the same if not worse. That above list was teams who had a top-5 offense, a sub-60 defense, and a top-4 seed; this is the reverse list of good defenses and bad offenses (sub-50th, just for a larger sample size).
Hilariously, it is precisely as imbalanced. The super-strong offenses and bad defenses won the same amount of games, on average, as the reverse. They had the exact same seeding. Tennessee is slightly more likely than not to make the Sweet Sixteen, but like Baylor, eventually the numbers will not be in their favor. Twitterati can apply a Tennessee Tax here to make that average number of wins 0.9 if they desire.
Where I am at. Sort of in the middle and leaning more towards optimism. I don’t think Tennessee has beaten six Quad 1 opponents for no reason. I don’t think they rate out as a top-5 metrics team for no reason. I also think that when they’re off shooting-wise, they better hope their opponent is too or it’s going to be a really rough night. They’re capable of making the program’s first-ever Final Four. They are also capable of losing to 13-seed Toledo by four points.
Where the team could be at, with a little offensive improvement. Same chart from above but with a new bit: the defense remains top-7 (again, sample size) or better while the offense finishes somewhere from 35th-60th. The average top 25 team’s offense on February 20th a year ago moved 1.5 points by the end of the season; if Tennessee hit that in a positive manner they’d be up to 50th, which isn’t nothing.
Overall: a little better, more second-weekend action (10 of 14 teams), which is a very solid rate. So just score more. Simple as.