Tennessee: post mortem

The lack of energy and execution in the first half was incredibly disappointing, and I'm not the only one who thought so.  Mark Fox lit into his team in the postgame interview for sloppy passing, passive defense, and soft offense.  It was almost a worst-case-scenario first half, one in which the Volunteers 7 point lead felt way too small...but also felt insurmountable.

Then Kenny Gaines and J.J. Frazier happened, and now we're talking about a nice win instead of a crippling loss:

• I'm going to go out on a limb and say any game in which Frazier and Gaines combine for 50+ points is a game Georgia is going to win.  Period.
• If Frazier was 6 inches taller he'd probably be averaging a double-double.  It's amazing to watch him rebound in person.  He literally comes out of nowhere.
• Why did Mark Fox yank him immediately after he split the double team with a spin move and buried a three?  I wish I could explain it.  His substitutions drive me batty sometimes.
• Yante Maten struggled from the field last night, and that was very much by design as Tennessee came in determined not to let him have his way, but his 8 rebounds were huge.  Throw in a couple blocked shots and he still managed to affect the game positively despite being taken away offensively.
• Maten and Derke Ogbeide barely lost the rebounding battle to Tennessee's entire team.  It was 22-15.  They matched them in offensive rebounds at 6.
• It was great to see Ogbeide get his first start, too.  He couldn't get the ball in the basket either, but expect huge strides out of him the next few games.  He seems more and more comfortable.
• Another solid effort from Charles Mann.  That's three straight.  And don't look now, but he's shooting 59% from behind the 3-point line.  Shot selection, shot selection, shot selection.
• Kenny Gaines is getting hit with at least one offensive foul per game, and it's almost always the right call.  He has a bad habit of stopping and pushing off with his left arm...
• Some great work out of Mike Edwards on defense and on the boards, which is exactly what Georgia needs out of him right now.
• Kenny Paul Geno is under-appreciated by just about everyone not named Mark Fox.  He'll never score in bunches, but he is exactly what every coach wants out of a 6th man.  He defends, passes, and rebounds, and he doesn't make a ton of costly mistakes (foul language aside, of course).
• Kevin Punter, Jr. is a great player.  Kenny Gaines and J.J. Frazier did a nice job of bottling him up, but he found a way to score, which is what great players do.
• I thought it was a well officiated game.  That doesn't mean I agreed with every call (I especially liked when they called a foul and then huddled to try to figure out who had been fouled), but I thought they were consistent, which is all I ever ask.
• Nice crowd, too.  The building was understandably dead at halftime, but it was rocking when Frazier and Gaines got it going, and it made a huge difference.  I expect more of the same on Saturday.

Was Georgia fortunate to survive that first half?  Yes.  Were they lucky to win the game?  Not at all.  With the first half in Oxford and the second half last night we're starting to see the full potential of this group.  When you have a major scoring threat in the post and two guards who can fill it up you're forcing an opponent to pick their poison.  Last night that meant open looks for the guards, and they knocked them down.

Saturday is huge.  Huge, huge, huge.  Get on down to Athens and make some noise, will ya?

Tennessee does it again

Oh hey, Tennessee, how's it going?  Not so good?

Not so good:

The University of Texas at Austin has hired an independent investigator following allegations of academic fraud within the men’s basketball program. The allegations were brought to light in an article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education last Wednesday.

The school announced Monday that it had hired former NCAA infractions committee member Gene Marsh to head the investigation—a decision made by the university’s new president, Greg Fenves.

The article highlights instances of academic fraud involving three former Texas players—Martez Walker, P.J. Tucker and J’Covan Brown—including one in which a professor saw Walker cheating on an exam but still allowed him to pass the class. Tucker was said to have received help on a paper while preparing for the NBA Draft, and a former academic mentor said that he helped Brown write papers on multiple occasions.

The allegations were made public just 13 days after the Longhorns canned head coach Rick Barnes, who is now head coach for the Tennessee Volunteers. On a conference call Tuesday, Fenvus told reporters that Barnes’ dismissal—which came after 17 years at the helm in Austin— was not a result of the allegations.

The Volunteers hired Barnes following the dismissal of Donnie Tyndall, who was fired after the university learned of his involvement into a series of academic violations that occurred during his tenure at Southern Mississippi.

Pretty remarkable run of hires Tennessee has going.  I'm sure, though, that they "vetted him" just as thoroughly as they vetted Tyndall, right?

[Deadspin]

Jaylen Brown to California

Jaylen Brown has committed to California.  Most Dawg fans saw the writing on the wall a while ago and knew he wasn't coming to Athens, so there's no need to be too upset.

In fact, instead of being upset, just find your closest Tennessee Volunteer and remind them that the guy they ran out of town is bringing in two top 10 recruits along with a 4-star small forward and a 3-star wing.  That should make you feel better.

And if you're still in the dumps, just mull this over:

On the flip side, Brown continues a surprising run of misses for Kentucky this spring. John Calipari and the Wildcats have now missed on all of their five-star targets in the last month, including Brandon Ingram (No. 3), Cheick Diallo (No. 7), Malik Newman (No. 10), Stephen Zimmerman (No. 12) and now Brown.

[ESPN]

Tennessee takes a mulligan

Donnie Tyndall is out.  This has been your daily dose of "Yeah, we all saw that coming."

Now it's time for Dave Hart to pretend there was no way he could have known...

[ESPN]

Tennessee: post mortem

That was a bad loss.  If Georgia thinks it's a tournament team, it has to win games against teams like the Volunteers, especially at home.  56 points just isn't good enough, and 20 turnovers is an absolute disaster.  We may have just witnessed Georgia's tournament hopes slipping through their fingers.

Wait...what?  They won?  How is that possible?  There is no way that team I just watched beat a quality SEC opponent.  I guess sometimes the other team is just worse:

• Seriously, though, 20 turnovers?  Georgia now averages 13.8 per game, which is good for 80th in the country.  80th worst, I mean.  It makes you wonder how good this team could be if they valued the ball a little.  The fact that 11/18 of them belonged to Mann and Gaines is really concerning...
• Georgia took 18 less shots than Tennessee.  18!  If your goal is to make things way more difficult than they have to be, that's a good way to start.
• So why did they win?  You can start with the fact that J.J. Frazier and Kenny Gaines were the only Bulldogs who shot less than 50% from the field.  When they were able to hold on to the ball, Georgia was incredibly efficient on offense.  The ball made it inside the zone, and they got good looks all day.  If I remember correctly, Georgia only settled for 2 mid-range jumpers, and one of them was a good shot (Maten's miss from above the free throw line).
• Maten had himself another nice game, by the way.  I love how confident he is with that free throw line jumper.  He has the post moves of an upperclassman, and he's starting to rebound like a grown man.  Tack on another 3 blocks just for good measure.
• Keep shooting, J.J.  You're always one shot away from being hot.
• Cam Forte's offensive fouls and turnovers are starting to look like Brandon Morris's travels.  You just assume two per game and live with it.  I still love the energy he brings, and he racked up 4 assists yesterday, so it wasn't all bad.
• Speaking of assists, Georgia assisted on 16/21 field goals.  That's a spectacular percentage.
• Taylor Echols did not cover himself in glory.  His two turnovers were back-to-back and extremely careless, but his 3-pointer got Georgia going after a sluggish start, so it wasn't all bad.
• Tennessee had 10 points at the first media timeout, but they only scored 43 the rest of the way.  My favorite thing about our guards is that, even when the shots aren't falling, the defense doesn't suffer.  If you want to find the last time Josh Richardson was held to 2 points, you have to go back a full two years.
• I like Armani Moore a lot.  He plays bigger than he is, and he filled the stat sheet yesterday.  He kept the Volunteers in the game.
• It was good to have Marcus back, even if he wasn't at peak efficiency.  The offense just runs better when he's out there.
• Second straight good game from Nemi.  He had 4 of the team's 5 offensive rebounds.  He has been working really hard on the glass.
• Game ball goes to the ballboy who neglected to towel off the Tennessee lane.  Keep up the good work, son.

Three straight games under 60 points.  It's not a winning formula, and Georgia will need more than that Tuesday night.  This was another game that could have and even should have been a blowout.  Cut out a few of the turnovers and there wouldn't have been any drama.

That is not the team we cheer for, though.  These Bulldogs insist on making everything as difficult as possible.  Another challenge awaits with an Aggies team currently tied for second in the league.  Expect another close game, because that's what Georgia does.

Game card: Tennessee

Opponent:  Tennessee
Mascot:  Volunteers
Primary color(s):  Creamsicle and white
Record:  13-8 (5-4)
Best player:  Josh Richardson
Line:  Georgia -7

Why Georgia will win:  Georgia's strengths line up well with Tennessee's weaknesses.  The volunteers don't score particularly well, and they are atrocious rebounding the ball.  They have two players shooting the 3-ball very well, but Georgia should be able to contain those shooters as Tennessee doesn't have big men that demand double-teams.

Why Georgia will lose:  Marcus Thornton, as of this writing, still has not been cleared to play.  If Thornton can't go, Georgia remains one-dimensional, and that has not worked well the last two games.  Tennessee has actually be better on the road in conference, getting 3 out of 5 of their wins away from Knoxville.

What I think will happen:  Does Thornton play?  Vegas must think so.  I'm going to say he does, and thus Georgia gets a big win 73-64.

Tennessee distractions

Did Tennessee continue a recent hot streak of disastrous head coach hiring by employing Donnie Tyndall?  Maybe.  Here's the story:

Need to handle expenses for a player before you can put him on scholarship?

Here's how you do it: You instruct the player to get an apartment near campus, enroll in classes and max-out on student loans. Tell him to get as much student-loan money as he can. Buy a nice TV. Hook an Xbox One up to it. Live life. Enjoy. And don't worry about a thing because those student loans will be "handled" down the road, one way or another.

Five years later, a booster will pay the balance off.

Maybe wait 10, just to play it safe.

"That's absolutely the way you'd do it," one coach told me Thursday. But, I'm told, that's not the way Tyndall -- or somebody connected to the Southern Miss program he ran from April 2012 to April 2014 -- allegedly did it, point being the first-year Tennessee coach now has some kind of mess on his hands.

Did he or didn't he?  I have no clue.   But the Tyndall hire reeked a bit of desperation when it was made, and you have to wonder if UT didn't vet him quite as well as they insisted they did.

h/t Garry Parrish

The Pikeville measuring stick

Exhibition games aren't worth much, so we should take this with a grain of salt, but a night after Kentucky destroyed Pikeville 116-68, this happened:

...but the Vols came back from an early deficit to beat NAIA Pikeville 80-62 in their exhibition opener at Thompson-Boling Arena.

Donnie Tyndall has some work to do.

h/t The Tennessean

Unrest in Knoxville

If you need a little pick-me-up this morning, just compare the offseason we are having in Athens with the offseason they are having up in Knoxville:

Volunteers coach Donnie Tyndall confirmed Monday at a Big Orange Caravan event in Atlanta that both players had asked for their releases "to explore their options."

"I don't think in either case, at least what they're telling me, that these guys have made their mind up to not come back," Tyndall said. "The door has been left open. We certainly hope they will come back, but at the end of the day, they need to be comfortable in what they're going to do the rest of their career, so we've released them to explore their options with the hopes that they'll decide to return."

Their departures would be the latest defections to hit Tennessee since an offseason coaching change. California hired Cuonzo Martin away from Tennessee on April 15, and Tyndall was announced as his replacement a week later. All four recruits to sign with Tennessee in November -- guards Larry Austin Jr. and Jordan Cornish and forwards Phil Cofer and CJ Turman -- have been released from their letters of intent.

Tennessee was already going to have to replace four of its five top scorers.  Now all of this.

And just to be clear, this is said with very little sympathy.  After all, the fans wanted this, right?

h/t ESPN

Coaching searches

There were many after the season ended - included myself - that thought Mark Fox should have been relieved of his coaching duties.  The team, for the most part, has failed to live up to even meager expectations.

With that said, it is important to remember that finding a new coach is no walk in the park.  Just look at what is going down at Tennessee and Missouri.  Both schools have some decent basketball tradition and far more recent success than Georgia.  Yet both, in the end, will likely have to "settle" for less than their first choice.

It was well documented earlier this week that Michael White - one of my first choices if Mark Fox had been let go, but one of Tennessee's backup plans - had decided to stay at Louisiana Tech.  This was after Tennessee shot for the moon and called folks like Wichita State's Gregg Marshall.

Today, Tennessee will introduce Donnie Tyndall as their new head coach.  Is he a bad hire?  Not at all.  He has had great success at Morehead State (remember that upset over Louisville?) and Southern Miss.  Is he the type of hire that would have ignited the Georgia fan base the way we would have hoped?  Unlikely.

Meanwhile, the search at Missouri slogs on.  Guess who is first on their list?  Gregg Marshall, of course.  After that, it looks like Ben Howland may be the leader in the clubhouse.  (Google 'ben howland sports illustrated' if you want to know why he would not have been an option at Georgia).  If neither of those work out?  It's likely on to the same plan B, C, and D guys that Tennessee was talking to.

What is my point?  I really don't have one (sorry).

None of this means that you do not fire your coach if he deserves to be fired.  It only means that if you do, and you're not one of those "destination" jobs, Gregg Marshall probably isn't walking through that door.

Martin to California

I admit I did not see this coming:

California has hired Tennessee coach Cuonzo Martin to replace Mike Montgomery, sources told ESPN.

Martin has spent the past three seasons in Knoxville and led the Vols to the NCAA tournament this season. He was previously the coach at Missouri State.

We will wait and see who they hire to replace him, and what it does to a pretty solid incoming recruiting class, but Martin has proven to be a very good coach, and this is the kind of thing that can help Georgia shift the power in (what used to be) the East if they can take advantage.

h/t ESPN