Previewing UT men’s hoops chances in 2017-18
Patience is more than a virtue for University of Tennessee fans; it is their natural posture. It is a survival mechanism after numerous missteps by the athletic department under Mike Hamilton and Dave Hart.
Tennessee fans know patience well. UT’s brass compounded the bad decision of hiring Lane Kiffin – who bolted for greener pastures after just one season – by inexplicably hiring Derek Dooley, who had just come off of a 4-8 season at Louisiana Tech. It then replaced Dooley with Butch Jones, and we all see how that is going.
Vol fans are tired of having to be patient with the top sports on the Hill. But if they want this men’s basketball program to succeed, they will have to be willing to hold out for at least one more year.
Rick Barnes is a good coach with a proven track record of winning. He’s also as clean as you can possibly be at a time when the FBI is dragging coaches out of basketball offices in handcuffs. He was a solid choice for a program for which there wasn’t a quick fix after Hart burnt it to the ground following numerous bad decisions.
Under normal circumstances, it would be more than reasonable for a proven coach like Barnes to be expected to make the NCAA Tournament in his third year at a school like UT. However, these aren’t normal circumstances. There’s a reason basketball powers don’t force coaches out after a Sweet 16 run: because it’s dumb. There’s a reason basketball powers rarely take a chance on coaches that have been nailed in the past for major NCAA violations: because they will probably get nailed again.
That has led to where we are today. As such, Tennessee probably won’t make the NCAA Tournament again this year.
There are two major reasons why the Vols likely will fall short of the Big Dance. The first has to do with the fact that the roster still is being rebuilt. There are a lot of quality young players on UT’s team, but it has no proven scorers. Grant Williams, who averaged 12 points per game last season, is the leading returning scorer this year. No one else on the roster averaged more than 8.2 ppg last year.
Admiral Schofield and Lamonte Turner could fill the void, but neither looks like a prototypical face-up scorer. Williams could take another step forward, but opposing defenses will collapse into the paint on him again if Tennessee can’t find proven shooters to space the floor. Looking at the roster, you have to wonder where the scoring will come from in crunch times of big games.
The other issue Barnes must overcome is improved competition within the Southeastern Conference. Kentucky still is a power, of course. Texas A&M continues to be solid. Mike White at Florida and Avery Johnson at Alabama both inherited better situations than did Barnes, and both have done well in their short tenures at their respective schools. Cuonzo Martin might vault Missouri from the bottom of the SEC to an NCAA birth in just one year by bringing in the best recruiting class the Tigers have ever seen.
Barnes started behind the eight ball at Tennessee. Before taking over for Donnie Tyndall, he hadn’t finished worse than seventh in his conference since 1992. In his two years in Knoxville, he has finished 12th and ninth.
The good news: Tennessee is improving. I expect the Vols to be in the bubble conversation for much of the year. It’s just going to take another season for this roster to compete fully at a higher level.
