Big Ten Wonk continues to be wrong about Tennessee’s defense

John Gasaway, former Big Ten Wonk and current contributing author at Basketball Prospectus, doesn’t have much respect for Tennessee’s defense. Today marks the second time he’s made the simple error in judgment that I have encouraged Tennessee fans not to make: discounting forced turnovers.

The first time was in his SEC preview, in which he argued this about Tennessee: “if they don’t get that turnover they’re utterly and completely helpless.” He even had a pretty table to support his point, which showed that the Vols allowed a large number of points “per turnoverless possession.” You know as well as I do that this is seriously poor analysis of a team that intends to force turnovers to end possessions (and does it quite well).

Despite an email I sent with intentions of correcting him, he continues to make the same mistake. In today’s back-and-forth with Ken Pomeroy, Gasaway says

It’s tough to be lukewarm about a team you’ve picked to win the SEC East, but, yeah, that’s a good description of my feeling about Tennessee. There’s no shame in losing to Texas, goodness knows, but the Volunteers’ quality opponents can be expected to score points in abundance when they don’t turn the ball over.

The emphasis is mine, not his. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a team who plays average defense when the opponent doesn’t turn the ball over so long as the opponent is turning it over in nearly 1/3 of its possessions, as Tennessee’s opponents to date have done.

I’ll emphasize, again, that Tennessee hasn’t just been lucky to play benevolent, giving teams who’d just prefer to have less opportunities at scoring. They are forcing these turnovers (more than half are steals). In Tennessee’s two games of note, it forced West Virginia into turning the ball over at a rate 43% higher than WVU averages. Texas turned it over to Tennessee at a rate 23% above their average, even in winning the game handily.

This is just what Tennessee does. It gains an advantage by forcing opponents to turn the ball over. Sometimes that doesn’t get the job done– see Texas. Usually it does (see nearly every other game), and Tennessee’s efficiency (30th, adjusted) has been very respectable, and is an improvement over last year (which, in turn, was an improvement over the previous year). Sometimes it is frustrating to see an easy basket given up, but the numbers speak for themselves and don’t support Gasaway’s assertion than Tennessee’s defense is bad.

I don’t know that we can attribute his poor analysis to Illini bias but that’s a fact that hasn’t escaped me. [ Hey Illinois-- Deon Thomas called-- he never got that Chevy Blazer he was promised. Maybe it was lost in the shuffle when the Illini were desperately trying to find their institutional control. ] Bruce Pearl may be an evil figure for Illini fans, but John– he’s a phenomenal coach and your quest to nitpick his team’s performances isn’t going so well. You may be right in the end and Tennessee may not be Final Four material (and any reader could see that I am not on the FF bandwagon at this point), but your analysis leaves much to be desired.