12-04-2025, 05:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-04-2025, 05:55 PM by BostonCard.)
As has been mentioned many times before, practice time is so precious that it is scripted to the minute. Any practice time that is spent working on press breaking means less practice time devoted to something else. I have no idea whether we worked on the press break or not in practice; I assume we have worked on all situations that can reasonably be expected in a game and certainly a full court press is common enough that I would expect we would work on it. But if you are arguing we should have worked on it more, then my question is what should we have worked on less?
People denigrate Tennessee, but based on Massey, its rating is just about right (17). Stanford is currently rated 35, which also seems about right. That would put us about 6th in the ACC, which is right where we were picked in the pre-season poll. WE are also predicted to go 14-7 in our remaining 21, which would get us to 22-9 for the season. That would be an improvement over last year’s 16-15 and 9th place finish in the ACC. That represents an improvement, but we are still a long way from the heights we achieved as recently as 5 years ago, commensurate with the improvement in talent on the team. But remember, that talent is heavily concentrated among freshmen, who have played a grand total of 10 collegiate games. I wish we were better than we are, but I don’t think being a top-20 team right now is realistic.
BC
Last Massey comment… yesterday was predicted to be a four point game by Massey (74-70), and the Vols had a 60% chance of winning. The final margin was… 3 points, and we had a realistic shot at winning until very late in the game.
Other than it being a much bigger defensive battle than expected, we performed exactly as projected.
As noted the FGCU match was the real underperformance. We were expected to win by 14, and lost by 4 (an 18 point underperformance). But even in that match, we “only” had an 88% chance of winning, which means that you would expect some performances like that (you hope that we also get a similar one in the opposite direction, though).
BC
People denigrate Tennessee, but based on Massey, its rating is just about right (17). Stanford is currently rated 35, which also seems about right. That would put us about 6th in the ACC, which is right where we were picked in the pre-season poll. WE are also predicted to go 14-7 in our remaining 21, which would get us to 22-9 for the season. That would be an improvement over last year’s 16-15 and 9th place finish in the ACC. That represents an improvement, but we are still a long way from the heights we achieved as recently as 5 years ago, commensurate with the improvement in talent on the team. But remember, that talent is heavily concentrated among freshmen, who have played a grand total of 10 collegiate games. I wish we were better than we are, but I don’t think being a top-20 team right now is realistic.
BC
Last Massey comment… yesterday was predicted to be a four point game by Massey (74-70), and the Vols had a 60% chance of winning. The final margin was… 3 points, and we had a realistic shot at winning until very late in the game.
Other than it being a much bigger defensive battle than expected, we performed exactly as projected.
As noted the FGCU match was the real underperformance. We were expected to win by 14, and lost by 4 (an 18 point underperformance). But even in that match, we “only” had an 88% chance of winning, which means that you would expect some performances like that (you hope that we also get a similar one in the opposite direction, though).
BC