Tenn - Pn St

[Mdoggie]

Before this loss, they believed Tenn could beat Uconn

Their diehard fans most likely still believe. Are they unwilling to admit that the glory days are long gone? What's the attraction for new recruits?

 

[Plebe]

It is amusing to see derisive references to "that guy up north." Not clear if they're talking about Geno or Lincoln.

It's impossible for me to keep from indulging my schadenfreude by reading those delicious morsels. Their resentful secessionist mentality never wanes.

 

[Geew1992]

Their diehard fans most likely still believe. Are they unwilling to admit that the glory days are long gone? What's the attraction for new recruits?

From what I've read, they know the good old days are gone while believing next year will begin a new time. Many believe even with the new recruits, if the coaching doesn't get better, it won't matter.

As far as the attraction, my opinion only, playing time. There's a lot of it

 

[formerlurker]

Vols stubborn adherence to a big front line has meant starting Winthrop grad transfer Shaquilla Nunn. I was skeptical that a player from a low-major could have an impact. She played 7 mins today even though she started. (Averaged 11 mins so far.)

Vols only dressing 9, and that includes Nunn and the non-top 100 frosh Harris.

 

[UcMiami]

It is really hard for me to understand the thought process of the three Top 15 recruits who have just committed to Tennessee. One of the three is from the state, so that one is somewhat understandable. But two other players came to Knoxville from Florida and Oregon respectively -- why?

Surely they have some idea of how offensively challenged Holly's teams have been. Today's game is NOT an anomaly, and they can certainly expect to play in many similar games starting next year. That is likely to cause them to be undervalued when the WNBA draft rolls around.

For those two players, going to Tennessee just seems like an irrational decision. Why wouldn't the Oregon player choose to play for a really good coach like Scott Rueck?

The simple answer is they are buying the cool-aid dream of being the player to reestablish TN to the glory of yore, and to worship at the statue of saint pat.

But it really is amazing to me that they haven't watched critically the last few years of TN basketball, or even just read the TN board to here what their fans think of Holly's coaching ability.

 

[Checkmate]

Before this loss, they believed Tenn could beat Uconn

They were talking about football

 

[formerlurker]

I'm a casual WBB fan aside from UCONN but remember hating Pat Summit and the Vol program as a whole.

I still despise the program but have nothing but respect for Pat. Very tough to replace an Icon and I don't look forward to the day ours decides he's had enough.

 

[Geew1992]

They were talking about football

Lol....sadly they weren't.

 

[HuskyNan]

Warlick is taking a page from McCallie's book.

Q: Holly, they played that zone. You’ve seen that zone before this year. Was it their size and athleticism that allowed them to be more effective in that?

A: If I watched that game, I would’ve thought that we haven’t seen a zone in five years. You can’t take an uninspired basketball team and expect to win. You just can’t. We were extremely uninspired, we didn’t listen a lot, we had the tendency to do our own thing, and we didn’t compete. How do you not compete? You bust your butt every day in practice and you don’t compete in the game. That’s just difficult for me to understand. So, Jaime Nared and Mercedes (Russell), they got after it. I’m really proud of their effort but when you have a game plan that says don’t give them transition points and they get 16, limit their 3-point shots, they get nine. It doesn’t take a smart person to figure out that we just didn’t want to be up here today. We take more three’s than Penn State. There’s a problem and that is not our game plan. They did nothing that we weren’t prepared for or have seen but they ran it to perfection and we did nothing about it.

 

[Gus Mahler]

Looks like Holly continues to break new ground regarding admitting in public that she hasn't coached very well.

 

[bballnut90]

I think it'll be another long season for us LV fans. Honestly, there's no way Tennessee will turn the tide until they clean house with the staff. Yes, every year Tennessee has been decimated with injuries to contributors, but not once has UT made it back to the Final Four despite consistently nabbing really highly touted recruits. Look at some of the recruits they've landed the last 10 years:
2007-Bjorklund (#2), Baugh (#5), Cain (#12)
2008-Johnson (#3), Gray (#4), Stricklen (#8), Manning (#15), Brewer (#20)
2009-Spani (#13)
2010-Simmons (#24)
2011-Burdick (#3), Massengale (#4), Harrison (#29)
2012-Graves (#5)
2013-Russell (#1), DeShields (#3)
2014-Nared (#6)
2015-Cooper (#12)
2017-Westbrook (#2), Hayes (#10)


In the 8 years or not making a final four, they've had 10 kids ranked in the top 6 coming out of high school and haven't been able to put together a cohesive unit. As excited as I am for next year's class, I'm cautiously optimistic based on the last several years. The team dynamic appears to have consistently deteriorated over time, and the outlook for the season is not bright based on today's game. The offense looked bad and no adjustments were made to stop Page. Tennessee doesn't have a consistent 3 point threat which led to 2-19 shooting. I don't care that Middleton/Deshields can light it up against awful competition. They have been mediocre shooters throughout their collegiate careers and until they deliver good shooting numbers against decent teams, I'm not convinced they'll be able to carry the load from the perimeter. Tennessee just lost by 14 against a Penn State team that went 12-19 a year ago. In the lineup they have three upperclassmen who were top 10 kids, and a senior point guard who is a 3rd year starter. Yes, there are injured players, but there's no way Penn State should have comfortably beat Tennessee like this.

Looking at the schedule, Tennessee has to play:
@ Virginia Tech-a team they lost to by double digits last year at home
vs. Baylor
@ Texas
vs. Stanford
vs. Kentucky
Home and away vs. Mississippi State
vs. Notre Dame
@ South Carolina

I might be overblowing it, but I think Tennessee could easily lose another 10+ games this year unless the play today was a fluke.

 

[UcMiami]

What is consistently amazing to me is you play all last year and EVERY time a team committed to playing zone defense against your team, the offense went into the crapper - yeah you pulled a few of those games out against lesser quality teams, but it was your glaring achilles heal that any coach who looked at any tape should have picked up on. So you have the whole off season, and the whole preseason with pretty much the whole core of your team returning, and you get to game 4 of a new season, and it becomes abundantly clear that your coaches haven't figured out how to run offense against a zone, and your players are still just as clueless as they were 12 months ago.

As an aside - Any coach who doesn't spend the majority of the time in a zone when they play TN should be fired on the spot. TN recruits athletes who want to play basketball and they are pretty good beating their defender off the bounce so they can shoot a chippy or a layup. Make them shoot jump shots and threes and they struggle.

 

[Buzzyboy]

I think it'll be another long season for us LV fans. Honestly, there's no way Tennessee will turn the tide until they clean house with the staff. Yes, every year Tennessee has been decimated with injuries to contributors, but not once has UT made it back to the Final Four despite consistently nabbing really highly touted recruits. Look at some of the recruits they've landed the last 10 years:
2007-Bjorklund (#2), Baugh (#5), Cain (#12)
2008-Johnson (#3), Gray (#4), Stricklen (#8), Manning (#15), Brewer (#20)
2009-Spani (#13)
2010-Simmons (#24)
2011-Burdick (#3), Massengale (#4), Harrison (#29)
2012-Graves (#5)
2013-Russell (#1), DeShields (#3)
2014-Nared (#6)
2015-Cooper (#12)
2017-Westbrook (#2), Hayes (#10)


In the 8 years or not making a final four, they've had 10 kids ranked in the top 6 coming out of high school and haven't been able to put together a cohesive unit. As excited as I am for next year's class, I'm cautiously optimistic based on the last several years. The team dynamic appears to have consistently deteriorated over time, and the outlook for the season is not bright based on today's game. The offense looked bad and no adjustments were made to stop Page. Tennessee doesn't have a consistent 3 point threat which led to 2-19 shooting. I don't care that Middleton/Deshields can light it up against awful competition. They have been mediocre shooters throughout their collegiate careers and until they deliver good shooting numbers against decent teams, I'm not convinced they'll be able to carry the load from the perimeter. Tennessee just lost by 14 against a Penn State team that went 12-19 a year ago. In the lineup they have three upperclassmen who were top 10 kids, and a senior point guard who is a 3rd year starter. Yes, there are injured players, but there's no way Penn State should have comfortably beat Tennessee like this.

Looking at the schedule, Tennessee has to play:
@ Virginia Tech-a team they lost to by double digits last year at home
vs. Baylor
@ Texas
vs. Stanford
vs. Kentucky
Home and away vs. Mississippi State
vs. Notre Dame
@ South Carolina

I might be overblowing it, but I think Tennessee could easily lose another 10+ games this year unless the play today was a fluke.

When are you going to say, DUH! The problem is the coaching staff and for years there's been stagnate offense that's been coached in Tennessee. With good coaching and good schemes, there's no question that Tennessee would have made multiple final fours over the past eight to ten years. If Geno had access to your talent pool, I can guarantee you'd have had substantially more success, meaning final fours and possibly national championships. As has been mentioned, there's little doubt that some of the high level talent you've gotten more recently is kids hoping to be the kids that reestablish the Vol's as a viable national championship contender instead of the also ran that they've become over these past eight or ten years.

 

[Bayareahusky]

Yes bballnut, bang on..... you have hit it on the head.... wow how much longer are LVs going to get more of the same..... the problem as I have always said, and you say here.... is squarely on the coaching.... do they have a dearth of talent? Absolutely not... to the contrary most in the country would love to have their roster..... what is holly saying about busting their butts in practice? Unfair of me to make conjecture... but i truly believe that in practice nobody is held accountable..... because bad or careless or uninspired play is certainly accepted in the games.... i do not see any of the LVs being yanked from the game.... all i hear and have heard in the post game pressers throughout the holly years..."we just didnt come to play..... we shoot too soon.... we turned the ball over too much.... we need to learn from this....etc etc..." and aside from holly, i really do not see an alpha dog in the asst coaching ranks there..... JMU having lost top 3 players, could have won that game if they did some things like shoot better from the line .... oh well do not want to holly bash but that is what will stay in my head as it has her whole tenure.... she has always looked lost.

 

[donalddoowop]

Why should they put forth much effort during the regular season when they know that no matter what, they will get invited to the NCAA Tournament as usual and they can wait until then to play hard, as they did last season.

 

[JordyG]

The simple answer is they are buying the cool-aid dream of being the player to reestablish TN to the glory of yore, and to worship at the statue of saint pat.

But it really is amazing to me that they haven't watched critically the last few years of TN basketball, or even just read the TN board to here what their fans think of Holly's coaching ability.

Not merely VolNation fans, but fans elsewhere as well. Today's game against Penn State was a prime example of good basketball talent forced into a bad offensive system. Worse was how often they were beaten down the floor on defense and how they continually walked or jogged the ball up court on offense. The players seem to want to work only as hard as necessary. It's inexcusable and an embarrassment to right thinking Vol fans and a feast for Vol haters.

 

[MilfordHusky]

I think it'll be another long season for us LV fans. Honestly, there's no way Tennessee will turn the tide until they clean house with the staff. Yes, every year Tennessee has been decimated with injuries to contributors, but not once has UT made it back to the Final Four despite consistently nabbing really highly touted recruits. Look at some of the recruits they've landed the last 10 years:
2007-Bjorklund (#2), Baugh (#5), Cain (#12)
2008-Johnson (#3), Gray (#4), Stricklen (#8), Manning (#15), Brewer (#20)
2009-Spani (#13)
2010-Simmons (#24)
2011-Burdick (#3), Massengale (#4), Harrison (#29)
2012-Graves (#5)
2013-Russell (#1), DeShields (#3)
2014-Nared (#6)
2015-Cooper (#12)
2017-Westbrook (#2), Hayes (#10)


In the 8 years or not making a final four, they've had 10 kids ranked in the top 6 coming out of high school and haven't been able to put together a cohesive unit. As excited as I am for next year's class, I'm cautiously optimistic based on the last several years. The team dynamic appears to have consistently deteriorated over time, and the outlook for the season is not bright based on today's game. The offense looked bad and no adjustments were made to stop Page. Tennessee doesn't have a consistent 3 point threat which led to 2-19 shooting. I don't care that Middleton/Deshields can light it up against awful competition. They have been mediocre shooters throughout their collegiate careers and until they deliver good shooting numbers against decent teams, I'm not convinced they'll be able to carry the load from the perimeter. Tennessee just lost by 14 against a Penn State team that went 12-19 a year ago. In the lineup they have three upperclassmen who were top 10 kids, and a senior point guard who is a 3rd year starter. Yes, there are injured players, but there's no way Penn State should have comfortably beat Tennessee like this.

Looking at the schedule, Tennessee has to play:
@ Virginia Tech-a team they lost to by double digits last year at home
vs. Baylor
@ Texas
vs. Stanford
vs. Kentucky
Home and away vs. Mississippi State
vs. Notre Dame
@ South Carolina

I might be overblowing it, but I think Tennessee could easily lose another 10+ games this year unless the play today was a fluke.

That's a staggering amount of talent not to make the Final Four.

I didn't see the game today, but Holly's comment reinforces my opinion that a GM who makes Diamond an early first-round pick is going out on a limb.

Remember when Diamond was in 10th grade and people were saying she could be the next Maya?

 

[Blueconn]

Does Tennessee need new direction? They have talent and more coming in. Sometimes change is good. Thoughts?

Yuh think ?

 

[Blueconn]

It's impossible for me to keep from indulging my schadenfreude by reading those delicious morsels. Their resentful secessionist mentality never wanes.

You're not alone and you're spot on about how irresistible it is. Banned myself from posting there when my correctly spelled words with two or more syllables confused some of the more enthused posters. Tempted to break my rule. Mind if I borrow "schadenfreude" ?

 

[Plebe]

You're not alone and you're spot on about how irresistible it is. Banned myself from posting there when my correctly spelled words with two or more syllables confused some of the more enthused posters. Tempted to break my rule. Mind if I borrow "schadenfreude" ?

Sometimes there's simply no other word that fits.

 

[DaddyChoc]

That's a staggering amount of talent not to make the Final Four.

I didn't see the game today, but Holly's comment reinforces my opinion that a GM who makes Diamond an early first-round pick is going out on a limb.

Remember when Diamond was in 10th grade and people were saying she could be the next Maya?

could've but she didn't accept Geno's invitation

 

[DaddyChoc]

oh yeah... Margo is back, she posted after Tn first 2 wins and I'm waiting for the Penn State video to show up

 

[Icebear]

Before this loss, they believed Tenn could beat Uconn

They have annually delusional for the better part of a decade. They saw that delusion fade on Thursday and collapse yesterday. Until they, actually, coach players up to the next level as a team the recruits going there will waste their careers and all their great talent at TN. The present arc doesn't have them at the FF anytime soon. Raw talent doesn't get it done just look at the FF teams last year and the teams they beat to get there.

 

[Wbbfan1]

Video: University of Tennessee Official Athletic Site - Video

Holly post game presser

 

[Icebear]

Russell is very talented but she's lost in a system, such as it is, that has no offense but depends on players to make individual plays by creating their own offense. It's hard for a post to be effective when she doesn't have the ball.

Not sure that it can be called a system.