New-look Tennessee + New Podcast Episode
It's starting to feel a lot like college hoops season...
Welcome back to the Hoop Vision newsletter!
With the calendar turning to November tomorrow, it’s starting to feel a whole lot like college basketball season.
We have teams all over the country playing “secret” scrimmages, coaches holding court at conference media days, and we even had a Gonzaga vs. Tennessee exhibition on Friday, giving us a first look at two perennial contenders (more on that below).
We also have a new episode of the Solving Basketball podcast with Ken Pomeroy joining for the sixth time as our guest.
We discuss how Ken's preseason rankings compared to the AP poll, the WAC's new solution to conference tourney seeding, 24 versus 30 second shot clock, and NCAA tournament expansion.
Be sure to subscribe to Solving Basketball on your podcast feed of choice as the season begins and we continue to interview coaches, media members, and other people behind the scenes of the college game.
Again this season, we will have a weekly feature called The Starting Five, available to Hoop Vision PLUS subscribers. Each week, we break down five of the most intriguing things we saw over the college hoops weekend, including offensive plays, coaching tactics, key statistics, and more.
In addition to receiving access to exclusive content like The Starting Five, Hoop Vision PLUS subscribers help support and fund the entire Hoop Vision operation, including this newsletter, the podcast, new longer-form content we’ve been producing for the YouTube channel, and all the in-season coverage you will see on Twitter.
In today’s newsletter, we dive into a slightly tweaked offensive approach that Tennessee displayed in Friday’s exhibition against Gonzaga. Enjoy!
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Smash Mouth Motion
For the past several years, Rick Barnes and Tennessee have been running their own version of Davidson’s motion offense.
Despite the similarities in scheme, Tennessee and Davidson have built their rosters in two distinctive ways, and the contrast in personnel has led to vastly different results in on-floor output for the two programs.
On the one hand, Davidson has been one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country. They spread the floor, are surgical at reading opposing defenses, and use a finesse style of play that has consistently led to great offensive efficiency.
On the other hand, Tennessee has established an identity one of the most physical teams in the country. They pound you inside, crash the offensive glass, and take a steady diet of mid-range jumpers. I call it “Smash Mouth Motion”.
When comparing the two programs, Davidson’s personnel mix has generally led to more consistent offensive success than Tennessee. Outside of the 2019 season — when Tennessee finished third nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency — Rick Barnes’ team has struggled to replicate that efficiency in the three years since then.
Below is a chart with data from the 2021-22 season. The x-axis is the amount of off-ball screens used per game. The y-axis is the points per possession scored on those off-ball screens. Davidson is highlighted in red. Tennessee is highlighted in orange.
As you can see, Davidson was second in the country in off-ball screens used per game — behind only Virginia. They scored a very strong 1.01 points per off-ball screen.
Meanwhile, Tennessee struggled shooting off of screens. They scored 0.80 points per off-ball screen.
More Davidson-like in 2022-23?
In Friday’s charity exhibition against Gonzaga, Tennessee’s Davidson-inspired offense actually looked more Davidson-like.
Tyreke Key, Santiago Vescovi, Julian Phillips and Zakai Zeigler all knocked down multiple three-pointers. Tennessee as a team shot 13-for-28 from behind the arc.
As a result, the Vols looked more dangerous when using off-ball screens than they have in the past.
Although the play below ends in a miss, it was one of my favorites of the game.
Ziegler starts out the play looking to feed the post, but the eventual ball reversal triggers a stagger screen — the fundamental action of the Davidson motion offense. After the stagger gets stalled out, Tennessee naturally flows into a second motion action — a flare screen for a Vescovi three.
When Davidson’s offense is at its best, defenses get so focused on guarding the player coming off of the off-ball screen, it opens up the slip to basket.
Sure enough, Tennessee got one of those slips in the second half against the Zags.
The Zags struggled with communicating their switches several times against Tennessee. But you can see how the threat of Vescovi coming off of the screen pulls Anton Watson out to the perimeter.
And while Tennessee appears to have the ability to play a bit more finesse this season, they didn’t completely abandon their “Smash Mash” style. Uros Plavsic got an easy basket off a physical duck-in below.
That’s apart of the “butt screen” secondary break progression that many different teams use in early offense.
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Of course let’s remember that this is just one game. If Tennessee had a poor shooting night against the Zags, this newsletter is likely about an entirely different topic.
But it was nice to see the Vols get so much mileage out of the motion screens. At the very least, Tennessee’s potential to stretch defenses more than they have in the past couple years is something to monitor as we enter the regular season.