[chimera]

Tennessee has not been the Tennessee of old since their championship in 2008.  Duke has underperformed their talent level for McCallie's whole time there.  We are in a strange spot.  We have a young team that could coalesce into something very good this year or more probably next next year.  That is the optimistic scenario.  But even very good probably would not be up to the standards we enjoyed during the Final Four string. 

We could also be just one of the pack of pretty good teams without much hope of a Final Four for the foreseeable future, the sort of team that wins a lot but can't beat the best teams consistently and occasionally loses to teams that are not that good.  Given the talent level on the team I think the pessimistic take is the more likely.  I see some young players who could turn out to be very good.  I don't see a superstar in waiting.  I don't see the sort of sharp team play that can take a good line-up and make them better than the sum of their parts. 

I see us relying much too much on our guards, and our guards, while good, are not better than the guards most top teams have.  We don't have consistent scoring from the 3 or 4 positions.  We can't win with almost zero production from the 4 spot and much better rebounding from the entire team.  We reply too much on threes and other jump shots so when we are cold, we are in trouble.  I feel reasonably ok about the Texas game except for the rebounding and the sloppy turnovers at the end.  We are not bad.  We are pretty good, all things considered.  But we are also not anywhere close to what we were 4 or 5 years ago, and I can't see that changing any time soon. 

[chimera]

Tennessee has not been the Tennessee of old since their championship in 2008.  Duke has underperformed their talent level for McCallie's whole time there.  We are in a strange spot.  We have a young team that could coalesce into something very good this year or more probably next next year.  That is the optimistic scenario.  But even very good probably would not be up to the standards we enjoyed during the Final Four string. 

We could also be just one of the pack of pretty good teams without much hope of a Final Four for the foreseeable future, the sort of team that wins a lot but can't beat the best teams consistently and occasionally loses to teams that are not that good.  Given the talent level on the team I think the pessimistic take is the more likely.  I see some young players who could turn out to be very good.  I don't see a superstar in waiting.  I don't see the sort of sharp team play that can take a good line-up and make them better than the sum of their parts. 

I see us relying much too much on our guards, and our guards, while good, are not better than the guards most top teams have.  We don't have consistent scoring from the 3 or 4 positions.  We can't win with almost zero production from the 4 spot and much better rebounding from the entire team.  We reply too much on threes and other jump shots so when we are cold, we are in trouble.  I feel reasonably ok about the Texas game except for the rebounding and the sloppy turnovers at the end.  We are not bad.  We are pretty good, all things considered.  But we are also not anywhere close to what we were 4 or 5 years ago, and I can't see that changing any time soon.