On Friday we pulled off one of the best upsets of the year, and one of the biggest wins in a long while for our school.
But, what does it really mean? Does beating #7 Tennessee actually change your perception and expectations for this team/season?
I’m sure some people would say, “Tennessee is the best team on our schedule, we can beat anyone left.” They’d be right, but should we REALLY expect that? After all, UT didn’t exactly play their best game of the year. Whether or not that was because of us is debatable.
We still only managed to score 49 points. A great number to score, but we still lack consistent offense.
So, where do your expectations fall for the rest of the season? Are you expecting top 4 finish in the A14? Top half? Middle-of-the-pack?
Are we still a work-in-progress, bound to take our lumps and bad losses?
We are still a work in progress. It shows that we have potential to be a solid defensive team. Typically in the past, for us to upset someone, we had to get hot and hit 15 3’s. Hopefully this helps the guys fully buy in to what Major is selling. I hope the fans buy in too and come out and support the team Wednesday night.
[quote=“2k, post:2, topic:24596”]We are still a work in progress. It shows that we have potential to be a solid defensive team. Typically in the past, for us to upset someone, we had to get hot and hit 15 3’s. Hopefully this helps the guys fully buy in to what Major is selling. I hope the fans buy in too and come out and support the team Wednesday night.[/quote]QFT
The win was huge but we still only shot about 30%. That needs to improve for us to get back to any chance of doing well in the A10. Getting KJ helps, but are still thin at guard. I think Colby can still get minutes against most of our competition, and getting dewhurst back will help.
It’s easy to get up for UT, blackouts, NBA arenas. Let’s hope it was enough of a confidence booster to carry over.
Wright State will be a challenge. They have 4 guys that average > 25 mins who can shoot the 3 ball at 35%. The 2-3 may not be as successful.
[quote=“BigTimeNiner, post:4, topic:24596”]I am just glad our fans had something to get excited about.
Take it and run with it.
Expectations are still the same. We are a poor shooting team,
TN was just worse than us on Friday night.
But I was happy to see Major up on the sidline doing some coaching.
He is starting to get a little more confident. Maybe the team can build
on this.[/quote]
This.
The win going forward will not mean much if we go back to losing to bad teams. No team is going to win much shooting 30% from the field, let alone beat a top 10 team. I don’t care how good your defense is, you can count on your hand how many program wins you have when you shoot that poorly. It doesn’t take away my excitement and happiness from Friday night for the players and Coach Major, but all of our giddiness will be killed if we lose to Wright State or Mercer. I will say, if we play with that kind of heart and intensity every game I will not be disappointed as a fan.
[quote=“J Felt, post:1, topic:24596”]On Friday we pulled off one of the best upsets of the year, and one of the biggest wins in a long while for our school.
But, what does it really mean? Does beating #7 Tennessee actually change your perception and expectations for this team/season?
I’m sure some people would say, “Tennessee is the best team on our schedule, we can beat anyone left.” They’d be right, but should we REALLY expect that? After all, UT didn’t exactly play their best game of the year. Whether or not that was because of us is debatable.
We still only managed to score 49 points. A great number to score, but we still lack consistent offense.
So, where do your expectations fall for the rest of the season? Are you expecting top 4 finish in the A14? Top half? Middle-of-the-pack?
Are we still a work-in-progress, bound to take our lumps and bad losses?[/quote]Going on the assumption all of our opponents will score more than 48 points, I don’t see this team winning many road games. I’m just hopefull they’ll continue to play hard, improve and stick to Major’s brand of ball. If they do those things, who knows what can happen come tourney time.
i think the tennessee game was so low scoring because defense on both sides was very good. This is tennessee we are talking about, I know they didnt play basketball but we forced them to shoot outside the paint and they’re horrible at that.
I really hope we pick up a winning streak. With road games agains Mercer and GaTech, I’m looking for two roads wins
This game shows that the season doesn’t have to be a wash. I don’t expect us to be a top 4 A10 team, but I think we can be a middle of the pack team. We still only have 2 scholarship guards, hopefully Luka can clear up his issues over the break.
I think it proves that we don’t have to lie down and give up on this year completely. Do we still have issues that need to be addressed in terms of on-court play and decisions? Yes. Are we going to have games where we may or may not have the “horses” to finish things out if it gets too fast-paced? Absolutely. That being said, we’ve shown that we are certainly capable of being a competitive team in our league. We don’t have to relegate ourselves by default to A-10 bottom-feeders just yet. Even so, I expect that even the wins will have the potential to grind down and get pretty ugly.
With all that being said, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see us in a position to make some noise come time for the A-10 tourney.
Going on the road is the biggest test for the team, we are 0-3.
A Top 10 team held us to 30% shooting, which might be better than what we shot against Old Dominion, Dayton and Rhode Island last year(at least it feels that way). Tennessee is loaded with athletes and they deserve credit for their defense. In the Atlantic 10 we will probably only play 4 or 5 games against teams with the coaching and athleticism to play defense like that.
Our defense was also phenominal, but we will need to man-up against hot shooting teams like Wright State. If we can hold a Top 10 team to 34% we have the talent to do that to other teams, the players just need the determination and confidence.
Has anybody said we would have won by 16 if Shamari played, because if so, someone needs to take them out back.
I’m expecting better than .500 basketball from here on out. I’m not going to all of a sudden expect us to be top tier A14 because we pulled off a great upset.
Tennessee was still more athletic than us at every position, but it definitely appears Deuce and Derrio have learned how to work together against taller defenders. The same problems were still there offensively on Friday, though. Trouble feeding the post, hitting outside shots, multiple trips down the floor without points, etc.
Cautiously optimistic. We’re still the same team, thin at guard in a league where guard play wins. If Derrio and Deuce can maintain this level of play (and maybe even shoot the ball better), we could make some noise. Add Luka and Dew and we’re instantly improved for sure. Sometimes works in progress look like masterpieces, other times they look like crap.
We are playing better not because we’re all of a sudden more talented. The players are buying in and playing with intensity.
If you’re expecting that this win means we’re an NCAA-caliber team all of a sudden, then I would like to borrow your Green Tinted Glasses. The bar is raised, for sure, but we’re not going to win many more games if we can only score 49 points.
Though, if we hold other teams to 48, we could win a lot.
It doesn’t change this season which I think with the injuries and Spears getting the boot along with a new coach was just a lot to overcome. What I think it shows is two things 1-the potential is there and you can see guys are starting to buy into Major’s system. The biggest thing that stuck out in my mind was how well we played defensively, very good to see. I think we have the potential make the NIT.
The other thing it changes is some of the perceptions of Major as a coach by some. We’ll see how Major does here long term but I think he’s got the potential to be a very good hire for us here. Time will tell of course.
I thought the same thing. Everytime we beat a Top 10 team it seems like the very next game we lose to a team we should beat. I remember in 04 beating Louisville on a Thursday night, big ESPN2 game with Dickie V. Then the very next game two days later losing at St. Louis in embarrassing fashion.
I loved Friday night, but we got lucky. Tenn is in a shooting slump and missed several open shots. We still have big flaws. We do not have a true scoring threat at small forward, our shooting guard is streaky and ice cold, and our point guard should be a shooting guard. That being said, I love our defensive intensity. Even more, I love that we were able to give Spears a big “in your face” realization that team play can be used to win games. I only wished it had happened before he was kicked off the team so he could see how effective play could be.
This win does change something - our team psyche. I am not sure what that translates to in Wins and Losses, but the team learned to play within the system for a full game and the result was a win. They trusted their teammates and trusted their coaches and we walked out with a W. That should pay huge dividends in terms of chemistry. We still have the same challenges and short comings, but if we can play sound defense and play together every night we should at least be respectable. At the start of the season I felt like if we could be around .500 I would be happy. After the Charleston trip I wasn’t sure that was possible, but after UT if we played smart ball I think we can stay around .500 which I will take with a smile this year.
I agree with NWA. If nothing else, it should help with team psyche. I have no idea what the Tenn win means for the rest of the season though. I would feel a little more confident had we won at Davidson. But getting pounded by a 4-4 Davidson team, just before the UT game, keeps things in perspective for me.