Tennessee at Texas 01/23/2025

[longhornlegend]

The Lady Vols were incredible to watch. Their style makes for exciting basketball. Their coach gives the fans exactly what they want - fast with high scores and lots of threes. They are the best in the country from the three, averaging 12 per game. But…

Man to man with a press is the very definition of old school defense. And Tennessee doesn't do it well. They pressed for 40 minutes and only forced 12 turnovers, lost in the paint and got twenty (20!) fewer second chance points. We had 15 more rebounds including 16 (9 more) offensive rebounds. They were annoying but not effective. Folks, we scored 80 points and held them to 18 below their average. We took 10 more shots and I don’t think they took a single charge.

The beauty of Vic’s game is he expects superior defense and offense. Quality shots always and crash the boards for the second chances. Tennessee has incredible offense but their defense is just basic. It looks really good because they are so damn athletic but it is extremely simplistic. They tried to gas us with a 10 man rotation and it didn’t work. Booker played 40. Rori 37. Jones 30.

The proof is in the pudding - Jones scoring 21, Booker scoring 26, and only one three from Lee. Taking away someone’s outside game but not stopping in the paint is simply not good defense. Especially being we don’t rely on an outside game… ever.

Tennessee is going to beat anyone in a shooting match. They are going to lose to most teams that show up with a defense. I predict they will lose three of their next 5.

There are only two Top 25 teams that are also Top 10 three pointers. Both of them lost this week.

That Tennessee team as spectacular and without the herculean effort by Taylor Jones, they would have left with a W. Two exceptional teams played and we were lucky enough to come out on top. Give them credit and give Texas credit. Great game!!!

 

[WCBBNUT]

I’ll give them credit for what they did - they played us hard and close and were extremely competitive. I won’t give them credit for a defensive effort that wasn’t effective. I also would hate to play them again. You have to bring your A+ game to beat them. That said, we had our A-/B+ game and got it done.

 

[WCBBNUT]

I will always remember the Tenn coach as the coach of the weirdest game I have ever watched. It was one of her last games with Marshall. Her team took 99 shots (which is really a lot) By comparison Tenn took 54 last night. So 99 shots is a lot for anyone. But 46 of those 99 shots were THREES. They only made 8 of those threes. 8 of 46!!! The other team only took 54 total shots. Only 54 total and only 11 threes, making 5. And Marshall won by 2 in OVERTIME. It was insane to watch a team shoot twice as many shots but still be tied at the end of 40 minutes. They just chunked up threes and hoped for the best.

 

[cnb]

 

[cnb]

One thing about last night's game. As we were settling into our seats, my wife said, "Doesn't look full. But parking garage was crowded". Then, my seat neighbor said, "Hmmm. Doesn't look like a big crowd"

Now that there's so many eating and drinking areas, people tend to show up to their seats late. Especially annoying were the couple that showed up 4 minutes into the game where it was very tight and they had to navigate (get people to stand up to get past them) through 8 people.

Anyhoo, Vic thanked the fans for the large crowd. I then went to look at the stats and although it didn't seem to be true, it was the largest home crowd this year! (but it's also embarrassing that OU got a bigger crowd against us)