re: 2019-2020 Season: UT Basketball discussion : 17-13 (9-8)

Tonight was refreshing -- That was a drubbing from start to finish

Great to see Fulkerson continue to ball out. It's going to be interesting to see what happens now on Saturday with the suspensions at Kansas.

Looks like it will just be two suspensions & they both only combined for 11 ppg. Smh

I do think we have looked more cohesive the last few games, but it's hard to judge when your playing this years Ole Miss & Vanderbilt.

Here's a good post from somebody on VQ regarding the defense stepping up. I thought he made some good points and wanted to share


"What Rick is doing with our D is really interesting.

This staff is masking our deficiencies (Vescovi and other freshmen) while playing up our strengths (several really talented guys who can guard anybody on a basketball court - Pons, Fulky, Bowden, James), and it's really damn smart.

It starts with the 3/4 court 1-2-2 token pressure out top. We never trap out of it (although start watching for that in certain matchups and the more Rick starts trusting it) but man does it ever eat some clock. And because we don't trap and we keep our heels moving backwards, we're not giving up easy baskets. Win win.

We can do that because we dont really care that much who ends up guarding who in the half court. I mean, we care, but we're ok if Bowden ends up on the ball, or Johnson, or Vescovi, or whatever. Basically we're valuing sucking down 10 secs off the shot clock more than being exact with matchups on every possession.

I repeat, we're NEVER giving up easy baskets out of the token pressure. I counted one yday but that's the first I've ever seen.

The other thing we're doing is once we settle into our man to man we're sagging and switching a lot more than we did earlier in the year. We're not trying to get over the top of anything and I dont feel like we're trying to get our bigs to recover to their man nearly as much. It plays into our strengths with guys like Pons who can guard the post and a guy like Fulky who can guard on the perimeter. ORN is slowly coming along as well. He'll surprise you with how well he can move his feet when he needs to (kinda like Grant did). And we're not asking young guys to play over the top or recover much. Just switch and stay on somebody for god sake! All this results in a lot of contested shots and less total busts. Smart. Alexander and a vet team can recover and rotate... this one not as much. It's almost like a matchup zone. Really interesting.

Barnes has found something defensively with scheme and his guys. Took him a little while but he's learning who he can trust and who he can't (and how to cover up for them). The old dog never stops thinking defense and I love that.

Just some of my thoughts. One BIG key is James. We all see the offense, but the defense might even be more impressive. He's a huge kid that can guard any position. Just watch him on D. Wow is he impressive."

Not Great!