Arkansas is #34 and Tennessee is #40 in Massey. There are 10-15 teams that should be ahead of each of them.
Who has either of them beaten?
I don't consider them a top 25 team either. Roughly equal to Arkansas imo. But their win over Arizona State is certainly better than anything Arkansas or Tennessee have.
Tennessee has better talent than coaching. They really should be a top 10 team.
In a new coach’s first year and without one of their top players for the year and with two key players from last year transferring away? Some of y’all had high high hopes for a team with only one player who really has any experience playing consistently. Give Coach some time. There may be progress yet.
No one stated they were happy with beating 3-10 teams but ya know, in the CHW era, we LOST to a lot of mediocre teams with 3-10 records. So at least we are beating the teams we are suppose to beat right now. I won’t be satisfied until we get back to championships but I’m also not delirious enough to think it will happen in Harper’s first season. Slow progress is all I wanna see. All the SEC games for us will likely be grind it out, ugly games this season. Hopefully we come out on the winning end in more of those games by the end. We will see.I've stated this before, but I really think we all failed to appreciate the brilliant long-term plan of Holly Warlick: zero out the fans' expectations so that they're happy just to beat 3-10 teams. It's too bad Fulmer pulled the plug on her so quickly because she in fact knew what she was doing
I do understand where you're coming from, but I think Vol fans tend to overstate how bad things were in comparison to this year. I certainly don't know of many 3-10 teams that Tennessee lost to. I can think of the Vanderbilt loss last year, but Vandy's record wouldn't have been nearly as bad if they hadn't been so injury-depleted earlier in the season.
I didn't mean to look past that game coming up. With this UConn team I'm taking nothing for granted, believe me. Tennessee's height and length poses a challenge for any team, to be sure, and foul trouble is always a wild card with such a short bench and no post depth.I guess I should have said I didn’t mean literal 3-10 teams but have we forgot getting down by 20 to a 1-7 team last year before barely pulling it out? Or losing to Bama...freakin Bama...6 straight times? That’s only two examples I can think of off the top of my head and I didn’t even mention the dreadful Vandy loss (why does it matter they were injury depleted...they still were terrible and beat us?). I get that we should have beat TX, but that’s the only game that we should have won and didn’t so far. And don’t forget, We still have a non-conference game left...don’t count us out just yet.
I am not knocking your new coach, I am simply saying Tennessee has the raw talent to be a really good team. I realize being elite takes more than talent, coaching is critical for a team to achieve the elite level. Even the best coaches need time to develop players. Given time, an elite coach will develop that talent. Time will tell if Tennessee hired an elite coach.
I can’t believe I am about to speak on behalf of the LVs but, this years team is not as talented as past LV teams, They have some talent and are building depth while also showing signs of a cohesive offense, something that never existed under Holly. Let’s face it, for as good a recruiter that Holly was, she never considered team chemistry and KJH is working hard on that. Losing to Texas is no embarrassment (just ask Stanford) as that team has oodles of talent. Can TN limit their turnovers which has always been their Achilles heel.
Yeah it's weird that an otherwise strong defensive team gave up so many points to Oklahoma and Missouri.I thought LSU was maybe turning the corner then we get slapped by Missouri and lose.
Partly due to playing Florida A&M, who is dead last (351) in the RPI. Playing Nicholls and SE Louisiana doesn't help much either.
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Partly due to playing Florida A&M, who is dead last (351) in the RPI. Playing Nicholls and SE Louisiana doesn't help much either.
But LSU still has a way better NC SOS than Arkansas (179) and, worst of all, Tennessee (267). Tennessee's will go up some after they play UConn. (Yet another reason not to be playing them
I mean, yeah, there's always some unpredictability. Some teams turn out better than expected, some worse. In theory it should kinda average out. Just in terms of raw RPI, I don't think LSU's NCSOS will be the thing that keeps them out. 100-ish is kinda low but not terrible. The teams that have been left out due to poor scheduling have been more in the 200s or maybe the low 100s: teams like Arizona, West Virginia and TCU last year.
Yeah, I have my eye on that as well. My guess is 6 or 7. You're right that the SEC outside of Lower Carolina (credit to Triad) accomplished little in the OOC. The conference did pick up a handful of wins more likely to end up in the 26-50 range (A&M over TCU and Georgia Tech, LSU over FGCU and Rutgers, MSU over Marquette maybe).
