FILE - Tennessee during a time out in the game against Ole Miss at ThompsonBoling Arena on Feb 3, 2018. s Caleb Jones, File / Contributor
Defensive statistic links No. 16 Vols to past NCAA champions Cory Sanning Copy Editor Having yet to win a national championship in the history of the program, the Tennessee men’s basketball team may be looking to NCAA history books for comfort. Predicated by defense, most of the Vols’ victories this season have had a positive correlation with that end of the floor. Consistently holding opponents to under 68 points on 41 percent shooting, the Vols now find themselves just one win away from potentially taking home the SEC regular season championship title. “We just want to create chaos,” Grant Wiliams said. “Just being aggressive in that sense and letting our defense dictate everything else.” With the SEC and NCAA Tournaments peering their heads around the corner, Tennessee currently has its most regular season wins since 2009-2010 and its most road victories in a decade. That being said, another attention-grabbing statistic is the Vols’ defensive efficiency rating. As it stands, Tennessee ranks fourth in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency rating (points per 100 possessions) at 92.0, behind only top-ranked Virginia, Cincinnati and Texas Tech. Since 2002, the average for the eventual national champion is 90, just two points lower than the Vols’ current mark. Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes credits his team’s defense to its hard work throughout the season. “It’s not a given, so I appreciate the work ethic of our guys,” Barnes said. “Working and playing hard is really hard to do, especially night in and night out.” Across 16 separate seasons, several of those teams were dangerously close to Tennessee’s current rating. The North Carolina Tar Heels of 2009, their second-most-recent championship team, held a rating of 92.1. The 2007 Florida Gators equaled the Vols in rating at 92.0, boasting a roster that featured Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Corey Brewer
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and Marreese Speights. 2015 national champion Duke also equaled the Vols in that category, with many other past champions within just one or two points. What about the Syracuse team that included Carmelo Anthony? It boasted a rating of 91.1. Even Kemba Walker’s UConn Huskies of 2011 had a rating of 91.9, with both of those teams entering the NCAA Tournament as the third seeds in their respective regions. No team in the past 16 years has won a title with an adjusted defensive rating of 92.5 or higher, and only seven have finished with a rating of 90 or below. For example, Barnes’s 2007 Texas team that featured Kevin Durant had a rating of 100.3 and ended up falling in the second round of the tournament to a USC Trojans team that featured a rating of 94.2. “We just have to play hard on defense,” sophomore guard Jordan Bowden said. “Getting consecutive stops and not letting your man score, just playing how we play, disrupting offenses.” Given today’s style of basketball, one would assume that teams boasting highpowered offenses have a significant advantage, but as history points out, that is not the case. The 2015 Wisconsin Badgers held the nation’s highest offensive rating at 129, just ahead of John Calipari’s 38-1 Kentucky Wildcats. Instead of taking home their first championship in 74 years, the Badgers ran into Duke, whose offensive rating was nearly five points worse. Holding a defensive rating over three points better, the Blue Devils held Wisconsin to just 64 points. Tennessee has 16 victories on the season, holding those opponents to 65 points or less. In four of those victories, the opposition was held to 55 or fewer points. With just one game remaining in the regular season, Barnes feels that the Vols’ improvement on the defensive end has also stemmed from the players’ willingness to pay attention in practice, which he surely hopes to see continue. “We’re here because we have a group of guys that have learned a lot,” Barnes said.
Thursday, March 01, 2018