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January 26, 2008

Vols Pummel Georgia in Basketball

It was about like I expected. I still say the game meant little. We took the #122 RPI team on the road to play the #1 RPI team, and the resulting outcome was about like what you would expect. UT 85 - UGA 69.

The next 3 games will let us know where we're going.

Here's my issue with the game...no the program as a whole. My source of frustration if you will. I'm no hoops guru, but I know three things to pretty much be unshakable, unwavering hoops truths:
    1. If you don't hustle defensively on the road, you don't win.

    2. If you don't pass well or move without the ball effectively, you're easy to defend. I think it was Bobby Knight who said, "The easiest man to defend is the man standing still."

    3. Moving and passing intelligently do NOT depend on talent.
I believe those are pretty much bedrock hoops principles. It's easier to win if you have superior talent obviously. However, if you do the above things, you'll give yourself a better chance to win independent of your talent level.

In my opinion, we struggle with all 3 issues, and we have for the vast majority of Dennis Felton's entire 4.5 year tenure. I personally see no reason why upgrading our talent will make us better hustlers, more intelligent passers or move without the ball with competence. If we're not doing it now, when will we?

But I digress.

Like I said earlier. This one game shouldn't change anyone's opinion one way or the other about the current or future direction of this program. The game was meaningless, and it played out as any logical observer would have expected.

We should take nothing away from the Tennessee program. They are one helluva basketball team. They obliterated us defensively, and wavered between toying with us and pummeling us offensively. They are exceptional.

Tidbits from the Game:
  • Per Dennis Felton, "We came out soft with everything. Soft with the ball, soft with our passes, soft with the dribble, soft with our post game. We were just soft."

  • Dave Bliss had the half of his life scoring 15 points in the second. The rest of our forwards/centers (Price, AJax and Barnes) combined to 3-9. That stat is inflated by two garbage buckets by Barnes late. In the first half, they were as useless as tits on a bull.

  • Georgia had 21 turnovers and 11 assists. When you don't pass or move well, it's not uncommon to have 2-1 turnovers to assists. We only had 26 field goals. The team committed 15 turnovers before it sank its fifth basket. (per Bradley)

  • The team's RPI jumped 22 spots in the loss due to the overwhelmingly strong nature of the Vols RPI.


  • UGA scored 1 field goal from 18:55 until 11:41 left in the first. A span of around 7 minutes. After a quick couple of buckets, Georgia then went about 9 more minutes with only 1 made field goal in the first half. While we struggled so savagely offensively, Felton did not bother to call a single timeout. Not one. The only stops in play came from television. We've got 15 turnovers and 5 field goals, but he didn't think some chalkboard time would help? So keep on trucking, I guess. Felton didn't call a timeout until 9 minutes left in the second half as the Vols hit 3 consecutive barely contested dunks.(Chart: ESPN)
They are a good team, but you have to be able to manufacture SOMETHING offensively.

On to Columbia. I'm pretty sure that the Gamecocks have lost their last two games to us in the Carolina Center. It's a winnable game against an SC team that is playing hard, but has virtually nothing to show for it.

See Also:
-- Hard Truth - AJC
-- Not as close as it should be - Bradley

PWD

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's impressive we play this well when we play so fundamentally poor.

Anonymous said...

We were very sloppy on offense. It's an issue that will continue to surface whenever we play a good team. Ut's man to man is good and we just don't do what we need to do against teams that play good D. Lofton was red hot too and that didn't help. Wednesday will tell us where we are.

walter geiger said...

how much longer does felton's honeymoon last? were he heading up our football program, he would be long gone by now!

in what ways is the program in substantially better shape than it was upon his arrival? that is how felton should be judged.

SlawDawg said...

sounds familar, Geogia didn't show up in Knoxville.

Anonymous said...

I watched the first half (it was all I could stomach) and all I can say is "What the hell do they work on in practice?". I played HS Basketball in Kentucky and if we had come out and played that fundamentally poor our coach would have run us until we died, then we would have done nothing but drills and fundamentals for the rest of practice. Good lord that was bad.

Anonymous said...

Hey Paul it's Boehm. I know the flow of bball is much different than that of football but it would be fun (possible?) to create a similat type of flow chart for each quarter of the college game. Maybe even a possession type of odometer to display when you had the ball in crucial situations, reflecting turnovers, red zone opportunities, TDs, fgs etc. Just typing out loud but I enjoy the bball graph so much it might be fun to tweak it for football. Thanks for the blog and Go Dawgs. Boehm

Unknown said...

Boehm,

I don't make those. ESPN does. I guess the closest thing would be the drive charts on their site.

Not sure.

S.A.W.B. said...

One of the TV guys had a good point at whatever bit of the pregame I managed to hear - Why are we getting exactly zero out of Terrance Woodbury at this point in his UGA career? He's the epitome of hot and cold...

Also, I can only help but wonder where this team would be had TK and Mercer not dorked their way out of school...

 
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