BruceBall vs. Louisiana-Lafayette Preview

It’s going to be a very cajun weekend for Tennessee sports. Tonight, the Ragin’ Cajuns from Lafayette, LA come into Thompson-Boling Arena, and tomorrow, the football Vols will try to roast the cajun corndogs from Baton Rouge in Atlanta for the SEC championship. Aaaaeeee! Pass me the andouille, Boudreaux.

I won’t concern myself with the Red Stick crowd . . . I’ll leave that for our friends in the football blogging world. The Ragin’ Cajuns from Lafayette gave the BruceBall Vols a tough go last year, primarily because it was a road test for a team that did not yet know how to play away from home. Tennessee’s youth and inexperience almost got it beat in Lafayette, even though the Ragin’ Cajuns were not a very good team (9-21, 7-11 Sun Belt).

Louisiana-Lafayette, or La La, as I’ll affectionately call it, is led by a sophomore star named Elijah Millsap, whose brother Paul plays for the Utah Jazz. Millsap, a 6′6″ forward, leads the team in scoring (17.8 PPG) and rebounding (7.8 RPG) and has hit 46.2% of his threes in four games so far this year. He was a strong player for the Cajuns last year (12.4 PPG, 7.4 RPG), but did not play in the game against Tennessee. He was actually not a very efficient player offensively, with a rating of just 92.0, which is below average. As a scorer, he rated a 27.3, largely because he ended nearly 1/3 of La La’s possessions when he was in the game. Still, he is very athletic and will present Tennessee with some problems. I’d expect to see Josh Tabb matched up with him for much of the game, with JaJuan or Tyler Smith occupying him otherwise.

The Cajuns have struggled so far, going 1-3 with no wins over D-I opponents. All three of their losses (Louisiana Tech, Oral Roberts, UAB) have been within 9 points. They play an average tempo, and their best quality to this point has been their turnover differential. They are #9 in the nation in forcing turnovers and #97 in giving the ball up. They have struggled mightily shooting (eFG 40.7%), which has likely been hurt by their lack of good ball movement– they have only assisted on 41% of their made baskets, #328 in the nation. They don’t rebound well, and defensively they put their opponents at the stripe constantly– worst in the nation, in fact, allowing 65.9 free throw attempts per 100 field goal attempts (Tennessee’s ratio is 33.4).

Chris Lofton torched La La last year, scoring 31 points on 7-11 shooting from 3-point range. I expect to see some of that, but hopefully he will get better support from the rest of the Vols this year (JaJuan was the only other Vol in double figures in the game last year). Here’s what we need to see as Tennessee fans, with tough games around the corner:

1. A solid game from Ramar Smith
2. More productivity in the post– with Childress back we may get this.
3. Fewer turnovers (last year we had 15 assists and 14 TOs)
4. Fast break opportunities
5. Few defensive lapses like the backdoor cuts we allowed vs. NCAT

I think we’ll get some of those– I’m hopeful that Ramar has turned a corner and can take his job back by playing efficiently yet aggressively at the point. There’s nowhere to go but up in the post, which has contributed very little in the last couple of games. I’ll be watching the defense in particular, and especially how we defend Millsap. We’ll have challenges like him down the road and we need to have a good plan and high intensity. My prediction: Vols 81, Ragin’ Cajuns 55. Geaux Vols.

Is Lofton back?

Yes, definitely. It’s not so much the fact that he hit 8 threes against NCAT, but the fact that he attempted 20. An aggressive Lofton looking for his shots is what we have seen in the past. He had been hesitant in the early games this year and that’s what concerned me far more than his misses.

On the season, Lofton is now 23-63 (36.5%) from downtown. That’s not great and is far below his career percentage, but keep in mind that he was only 3-17 after 3 games, not taking (5 per game) or hitting (1 per game) nearly enough as the leader of this team. Since then, he is 20-46 (43.5%), very close to his career average. He’s hitting 5 per game and taking almost 12, which I think is a good sign of things to come.

It was clear against NCAT that Lofton was given the green light by Pearl, taking any shot that was there. I think there are two reasons for this: one, because NCAT was very loosely defending the perimeter, and two, because Lofton needed to shoot himself back into the forefront on this team. He did so late in the first half, hitting 6 threes in 4 minutes and very nearly putting the game away before halftime.

With Western Kentucky, Xavier, and Gonzaga fully on the radar now, it’s about time we see Lofton getting aggressive and looking to score. We will need his attitude and his uncanny shooting if we are to finish December with just 1-2 losses. Tyler Smith is carrying part of the load, and I think those two will work very well together as the season goes on. JaJuan Smith will keep us in games and be a very solid player on both ends of the floor. But Lofton is still the dominant figure on the Vol basketball team, and I think he has finally realized how important it is for him to maintain that role.

Watch out, Louisiana-Lafayette. The 6-foot-2-inch (if you give him a box to stand on) sleeping giant is wide awake and ready to put daggers into any opponent that takes the floor with him. And not a moment too soon.

Intro to a geeky stat

The regular season is now 20% over (6 games vs. D-I played, 24 to go). I figured that this was as good a time as any to round up the relevant stats and take a peek at how we’re doing, as well as how we stack up against our competition and the the nation.

Adjusted for schedule, the Vols rank 19th in the nation offensively (117.5 PP100) and 23rd defensively (83.6 PP100) . Not bad. Now I will introduce another fun (and geeky) stat: Pythagorean expected win percentage.

Pythagorean expected win percentage (or “Pythag” as I describe it verbally) has its origins in the statistical analysis of baseball teams. Essentially, it was designed to calculate how many games a team should have won, based on how many runs it scored and how many runs it allowed. Obviously, most teams aren’t going to match this expectation exactly– they may win one game 15-2 and then lose the next 8-7. Then they have scored a bunch more runs than they allowed, but are still just 0.500. Get the picture? Anyway, the basic formula is

E(W%) = runs scored^2 / (runs scored^2+runs allowed^2)

For this particular team, E(W%) = 11.5^2 / (11.5^2+4.5^2) = 0.867. You can see that they are perhaps playing better than their record would indicate. If it weren’t just 2 data points (games) we might like to use this information to predict that they will win more games than they will lose, and to date have just been “unlucky” to achieve only a 0.500 record.

A similar formula can be used for basketball, using points scored and points allowed– but we have a problem. The scales between these two sports (total scores per game) are very different, so we can’t expect one formula to work for both. In fact, the formula used for basketball can be modified to more closely match outcomes. The end result is that instead of squaring all terms, a higher degree is used for the exponent– anywhere between 11 and 17, typically. Ken Pomeroy has found that 11.5 is the best exponent to use for NCAA basketball, making the formula

Pythag = points scored^11.5 / (points scored^11.5+points allowed^11.5)

Problem #2– as we’ve already discussed before, tempo matters in basketball. In baseball, there’s no such thing– everyone gets 9 innings, 3 outs per inning. But in basketball, possessions vary by tempo. So we will use our handy dandy tempo-free measures, offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency, in points-per-100-possessions.

If we plug-and-chug, as a math professor used to say, we get a Pythag rating for Tennessee of 0.980. That means Tennessee has played well enough, according to the formula, to expect to win 98% of its games. That’s good enough for #13 in the country, and for what it’s worth, West Virginia and Texas are 1-2 in that stat. Now, the Pythag is a bit inflated at this point in the season. 98%, by the end of the year, will only have been achieved by the top 3 or 4 teams in the nation, and #13 will be more in the 94-96% range.

And of course, we must qualify this by saying most teams have only played 5-7 games or so. These ratings will fluctuate considerably in the next month, and late in the season they will be much closer to being fixed (and accurate).

Now, the way I use this stat is primarily to rank and compare teams– the actual number, as an estimate for win %, is not terribly meaningful to me. But it does represent, in my mind, the most accurate portrayal of how well a team is actually playing. Note that wins and losses play no part in the calculation, so this is strictly quality of play, not outcome. Some teams will play very well and not have a record that reflects it (Kentucky was #14 in Pythag last year but lost 12 games), and other teams will win more games than their Pythag would suggest (Tennessee was #31 last year). What Pythag allows you to do is to look before last year’s UK-UT game and say that both teams play good basketball, and that Kentucky had a good chance of winning (and did in fact win 1 of 2). Poll rankings and RPI do not give you a very reliable way to make this assessment.

This will be a stat I mention frequently, so I thought it was important to give you at least a working knowledge of what it means. Tennessee is off to a good start in Pythag this year, and hopefully it will remain high as we plow into the meat of our schedule.

Tennessee 93, NC A&T 59

If I told you the Vols would fire up 50 three point shots, what would you think? What if I told you they would only hit 14 of them? You’d possibly think the Vols were in desperation mode and perhaps lost the game, but of course that wasn’t the case. According to Coach Pearl, North Carolina A&T sloughs off defensively in order to protect the interior from dribble penetration. Whatever the cause, the perimeter was open all night long for the Vols, and they weren’t going to pass up an open look– even when they couldn’t hit them to save their lives.

Fortunately for Tennessee, they were able to smother NC A&T on the defensive end, force turnovers, and take a lot more shots than the Aggies. They rode their defensive pressure and a first-half scoring binge by Chris Lofton to a 30 point halftime lead. The lead never expanded much in the 2nd half, but it never got below 21 points either.

Lofton, at long last, does not seem gun-shy anymore. He fired up 21 shots, 20 of which were from three, and hit 8 of them in scoring 24 points to lead the Vols. It was the first time he’s eclipsed the 20-point mark this season. Tyler Smith played an excellent game (outside his 4 turnovers), registering 17 points on 7-7 shooting, grabbing 12 rebounds, dishing 2 assists, and getting 4 steals. He looked very smooth and under control, and the 17 points added up without much fanfare. He still seems to be finding his game and his role on the team. Personally I’d like to see him be more aggressive with the ball and try to score. He’s a very unselfish player but we need someone getting the ball to the rim and he’s clearly the most adept at doing it.

The pressure defense, as I said, was very good at times. But a half-dozen times, the Vols were back-doored for easy layups, a strategy that you can bet will be employed by Vol opponents in the future. It did appear that this problem was fixed down the stretch of the game, and several back-door attempts were foiled by the Vol defense late in the game. NC A&T did not shoot well from the perimeter, which severely hampered their offensive game. But on two-point baskets, they were a healthy 23-36 (64%), which is a number I know Bruce Pearl is not going to be happy with. They got too many easy looks– just not enough to keep up, and their turnovers (29) were killers.

I was pleased with a few things last night– unselfish play (28 assists on 34 baskets), active defense (17 steals), and good games from Ramar Smith (11 points, 6 assists, 1 TO) , Tyler Smith, Chris Lofton, Josh Tabb (10 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 steals), and Cameron Tatum (9 points in just 6 minutes). There was enough that went poorly that Bruce is certainly going to be able to teach from this game. The threes, though open, were excessive, especially against a team we had out-manned. We also had 18 turnovers and were visibly sloppy and hurried at times. Rebounding was average (48 to 43). Free throw shooting is still not good (11-19). We didn’t get enough production out of our big men, either (Chism, Crews, and Williams combined for just 10 points).

While it should be hard to complain about a 34-point win, I’m doing it anyway. We did things last night that will get us beaten by good teams. Still, the Vols at this point are good news / bad news. The bad news: this team is not where it can be and needs to be. The good news: it’s a long time until March and there’s plenty of room to grow.

BruceBall vs. North Carolina A&T Preview

The Vols will look to rebound from a tough loss to Texas with the NC A&T Aggies coming into Thompson-Boling Arena tonight. I’m expecting to see a pretty crisp performance, with Tennessee returning home and using the familiar Wilson ball that the team prefers. Bruce Pearl has said he may trim the rotation to 9, but didn’t give any indication as to who will be seeing his minutes cut.

NC A&T is 4-2 on the season, but only one of the four wins came against a Division I foe– the Aggies’ win at DePaul on November 24. DePaul is not what it once was, but this was still a great win for the Aggies, who went just 13-17 a year ago while finishing 4th in the MEAC. NC A&T is led by senior guard Steven Rush, a 5′11″ sharpshooter that burned DePaul for 40 points and hit a school record 10 3-pointers. Oddly enough, Rush does not start for the Aggies, and only started four games a year ago, though he has led the team in scoring both years with 17.3 PPG. He’s a solid player offensively, finishing last year with an offensive rating of 115.0 (#192 nationally). He also hit more than 40% of his 3-point attempts and 86% of FT attempts. His scoring productivity (perhaps we should dub this his scorer rating) was 29.6, easily the highest on his team.

The Aggies didn’t rebound well a year ago and are small at point (5′11″ Austin Ewing) and in the post (6′9″ James Porter). Tennessee should match up well, with just one other Aggie scoring in double figures (6′6″ F Jason Wills, 12.3 PPG). They have played at an average tempo in their three D-I games this year, but that may have more to do with their opponents than them– Pitt and Saint Louis each play very slowly (67 and 60 possessions per game, respectively). The Aggies played quickly a year ago, averaging just under 72 possessions per game (33rd nationally). This pace favors Tennessee, who will likely try to force NC A&T into turnovers for easy buckets. The Aggies aren’t especially good at taking care of the ball, so Tennessee ought to be able to exploit this.

I think Tennessee will come out with some intensity, and the homecourt will be a welcome sight. I expect Rush and Wills to score some points, but overall Tennessee’s defense will hold the Aggies in check. Offensively, I think we see Chris Lofton play more aggressively, shooting at least 10-12 times. I also think we will try to push them around in the paint with dribble penetration and strong post play, so I look for Ramar Smith and perhaps Duke Crews to have nice games for Tennessee. My prediction: Vols 91, Aggies 64.

@&#% Texas

Well, that sucks. I was mid-flight when the BruceBall-Texas game ended, hopeful (but doubtful) that the 2nd half would go the Vols’ way and I’d get word that we won. The plane landed, I turned my phone on, and I had a message waiting for me that basically said this:

The word I’ve been hearing is that we just didn’t bring it defensively, and the stats agree. Tennessee gave up 97 points on 73 possessions for a raw efficiency of 132.9. That’s abysmal. It sounds like intensity was way down and we just gave Texas too many looks. Perhaps WVU took it out of us the night before, or perhaps we were really just overmatched. No early-season tourney title this year, folks.

It sucks to lose, but I’m not terribly concerned. With all of these early road/neutral tests, there was no way we were going to fly into the SEC season without getting our hair mussed. You don’t play tough teams in tough venues in order to pile up wins. You play these games to get your boys some good experience against good teams, and to learn things about yourself and where you need to improve. Last year about this time, we looked silly against Butler and UNC. Later in the year, we lost 6 of 8 games in a really rough stretch. But I’d say by any measure, we were a very good team in March and just missed the Elite 8. Those tests and tough losses shaped and grew our team. We will be okay this year too.

Tennessee 74, WVU 72

No review today, folks, so I’ll direct you to the esteemed opinion of a Cheap Bastard who attended the game to entertain you. I’ll be running around like a chicken with its head cut off all weekend. I won’t be able to see the game tonight vs. Texas either, so no review coming on that tonight or tomorrow. I’ll be back Monday night and will try to catch up.

In the meantime, GO BRUCEBALL and GO FOOTBALL VOLS, who both have a title to play for today.

BruceBall vs. West Virginia Preview

After a brief break, the Vols return to Legends Classic action tonight against the West Virginia Mountaineers at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. It’s bad enough that the poor fellas have to spend time in the “Garden” State, but they’re going to have an all-out brawl on their hands while they’re there. West Virginia brings back some very solid players from the 2007 NIT title team, and brings in a new coach that stresses questionable recruiting practices pressure man-to-man defense, Bob Huggins.

West Virginia will be a stiff test for the Vols, easily the toughest competition to date. The Mountaineers have played just two games against patsies Arkansas-Monticello and Prairie View A&M, but they were very efficient in dispatching them and are currently rated #1 overall and in defensive efficiency by Ken Pomeroy. They won the two opening round games by a combined score of 187-94– not bad. The Vols outscored the same two teams 190-119 and had some problems with Prairie View before putting them away.

The key for WVU to this point has been forcing difficult shots (opponents are 25% in eFG%) and turnovers (40.7 per 100 possessions, which leads the NCAA). Offensively, Huggins’s boys have shot very well, with an eFG% of more than 66%. WVU has been led by 6′6″ guard Alex Ruoff, who is averaging 19.5 points and has hit 8 of 13 3-point attempts through two games.

One very interesting stat for WVU through two games is their tempo: 83.6 possessions per game (kenpom.com). Last year, John Beilein’s Mountaineers averaged just 63.6 possessions per game, one of the slowest in the country. Huggins’s Kansas State team averaged just 67.6 possessions per game, which was about middle-of-the-pack in the NCAA. Unless Huggins has changed styles despite personnel that are used to a very slow pace (doubtful), I think the only explanation is that WVU has gone completely unchallenged. They have forced too many turnovers to keep the pace low, and have had an uncharacteristic number of runouts and quick possessions. I think their strategy against Tennessee will still be to drag the tempo down and force a halfcourt game.

Tennessee will be overmatched in height at every position, with WVU starting 7′0″, 6′8″, and 6′7″ across the front line and 6′6″ and 6′3″ at guard. Tennessee ought to be quicker at every position, though, so it will be interesting to see which team is better able to hide its weakness and take advantage of the mismatches that favor it. West Virginia has not taken care of the ball well (20.7% of possessions end in a TO), so Tennessee will likely look to exploit that with its quick hands and get some fast break buckets as a result.

If the Vols can come out shooting well as they did vs. MTSU, I think they can take WVU out of its game and control the tempo. If they do not shoot well, it will be a tough slog for Tennessee and Bruce’s boys will have to work for easy looks through dribble penetration and strong defense. In the end, I think Tennessee’s athleticism will rule the day, and the fact that PVAMU pushed the Vols to play a little more urgently can only help at this point. My prediction: Vols 81, Mountaineers 72.

Happy Thanksgiving, basketball fans

Go ahead– eat too much and watch football with the in-laws. I’ll see you on the flipside.

Now that was interesting

Just four nights before, Tennessee fans were up in arms about how much their basketball team struggled against a clearly inferior opponent. Just four nights before, pessimism was running rampant. Chris Lofton’s game was still MIA, we couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the perimeter or the stripe, and we gave up 20 offensive rebounds to a team that we should have dominated physically.

It’s amazing how two hours on a Tuesday night can change all of that. For two hours in Thompson-Boling Arena last night, Tennessee looked like a team that can beat anyone, anytime, anywhere, and make them look silly in doing it. I don’t care what MTSU’s record is or how they finish the season. You don’t dominate a mid-major team in every phase of the game the way Tennessee did without bringing something special. To a man, everything was special about the Vols last night.

This must have been some weekend for the Vols. I bet they all got a nice earful about their performance against Prairie View A&M, and it seems they all took it very, very seriously, none moreso than the Vols’ top scorers, Lofton and JaJuan Smith. The two combined for 12-19 from 3-point range, 49 points, and 10 assists. This after a 5-25 performance against Prairie View had Tennessee fans wondering if we’d lost our shooting mojo.

This, to me, is Exhibit A in the case for Bruce Pearl as one of the best coaches in the NCAA. Could you ask for a better response from your players? Sure, MTSU is not a great team, but that’s exactly the point that needed to be made after PVAMU: every team can beat you and you better play at full speed or they will. And oh, did the Vols play at full speed against the Blue Raiders. They forced 29 turnovers (18 steals) and allowed MTSU just 7 assists on 13 made baskets. The Vols, on the other hand, had 30 assists on 37 field goals and just 9 turnovers.

This is what we all thought this team had the potential to do. It was nice to see it realized, especially with some very tough competition staring us in the face. West Virginia has the top defense in the nation so far (though they have just played 2 games– Arkansas-Monticello and Prairie View A&M) and is shooting a remarkable 57% from downtown. Texas has shown that they don’t miss Kevin Durant too much, with three blowout wins in as many games. If all goes well, those are the two teams Tennessee will face in Newark this weekend. If last night’s Tennessee squad shows up, Tennessee will likely return home 6-0.

Of course, not every game can be so perfect. Tennessee will struggle at times, and may even take a team lightly again at some point. And JaJuan Smith is not always going to score 26 points in one half. But we have now seen what this BruceBall team can do. Next weekend, we’ll get a better idea what they’re made of.