UK-Tennessee Q&A with Will Warren, a.k.a Stats By Will
Learn about the Vols from an expert on them
I’ve said enough about Kentucky lately, with indepth posts describing what’s wrong on both offense and defense. To change things up before the Wildcats take on Tennessee, I thought I’d lean on the expertise of someone very familiar with Tennessee Volunteers basketball.
Will Warren (aka StatsByWill on Twitter) write about college basketball and analytics, focusing on Tennessee’s men’s team. His newsletter Stats By Will is terrific, combining excellent scouting reports on Tennessee opponents with spotlights on anlytical curiosities across college basketball. I have learned some interesting things from reading his work, and in particular his analysis of how offenses score is very thought-provoking. For today’s newsletter, I conducted a Q&A with Will via email.
How about you start by introducing your newsletter…
The newsletter is called Stats by Will; it’s not a creative name but I needed a name period. I cover Tennessee basketball and have for a few years now, but to keep myself honest there’s also weekly posts on NCAA and SEC basketball, respectively. I try to not be to narrowly focused and like to be conscious of personal bias for/against the team I cover, but I’m no robot and do like to get involved. Also, as the Tournament draws near I post a bunch of stats stuff on that, as it’s obviously our sport’s main draw.
How did you get started in basketball analysis?
Well, it helps when you're not very good at basketball but you love basketball so much that you find an alternative way to analyze the game. I am a proud nerd who's always been obsessed with numbers, but my degree is in English with a Journalism minor. Basketball's the first sport I grew up playing and the one I've played the longest; I still try and get in at least one pick-up game a month even though I've committed a lot of time to distance running these days. I worked at a local radio station for a while and sort of stumbled into the realization that I knew way more about basketball than I did football, so I dove in and began writing as much as I could. (This is also the secret admission that I don't care very much about Tennessee football anymore, though I did enjoy their season this year.)
Why did you choose to lower yourself to covering Tennessee, of all programs?
Fortunately or unfortunately, I've lived in the state of Tennessee (first in rural middle TN, now in Knoxville) my entire life. I grew up listening (not watching, because they were frequently off TV) to Tennessee basketball games with my grandfather and was 12 when Bruce Pearl took the job, so at a formative time UT hoops became really exciting to follow. It was probably most influential in me ending up at Tennessee, because I ended up attending a ton of games as a student. As an adult, though, noticing that Tennessee basically had no serious basketball-specific coverage locally was a bummer. I wanted to see if I could apply my knowledge to the subject and see if it might lead to brighter discussion of the team; up to the readers if it's worked or not, but I'd like to think I have been very mildly influential locally.
What is Tennessee doing well this year as a team, and what players make the largest contribution to this?
Tennessee is tremendous at taking your team's best player or scorer out of the game for large stretches of time. Only four players all season have scored more than their season average against Tennessee, and frequently, the scoring responsibility has fallen to secondary guys who aren't prepared to take that step up in an efficient manner. They pressure the ball out to the half-court line and it frequently feels like the shot clock gets down to 13-15 seconds before teams realize they have to run some sort of offensive set. It's a marvel to watch, and even if I think they're long overdue for someone to hit a few threes on them I think they're inarguably one of the two best defenses in the sport alongside Houston.
The guys who make the biggest impact sort of vary by night but you can generally count on Santiago Vescovi, Zakai Zeigler, and Josiah-Jordan James showing up regardless of opponent. The X-factor of sorts is when Julian Phillips and/or Olivier Nkamhoua are locked in. If all five are firing off defensively and contributing efficiently on offense, there is not a team in America that can beat them. They've also had a couple of key bench pieces emerge defensively in Jonas Aidoo (6'11" center) and Jahmai Mashack (6'4" Swiss Army knife). Mashack in particular can guard 1-4 and is the most ruthless perimeter defender Tennessee has perhaps ever rostered.
Will Santiago Vescovi pursue his 13th year of eligibility in an attempt to play more games than Coach K coached in?
Wait until Uros Plavsic somehow finds a way to play another year.
Tennessee has the best defense in SEC play while Kentucky has the worst. Isn't it unfair of Tennessee to play this way?
It is only unfair if you consider that college basketball is a sport designed by God Himself to make us eternally unhappy in March, always on the brink of wanting more, never achieving the things you desire. Maybe this is more of a personal experience than a universal one.
How has Tennessee evolved their offensive and defensive strategies in recent years to get to the level they are at now, as arguably one of the top 5 teams in the country?
Just two seasons ago, Tennessee was among the national leaders in mid-range jumpers attempted per game. Synergy doesn't have an easy way of adding in jumpers from post-ups, but when I ran the data at the time, Tennessee was only surpassed by four teams in America in the sheer volume they took. Even if you eliminate the post-up jumpers, Tennessee took more mid-range Js than 306 of the 347 participating teams in the 2020-21 season. In 2022-23, they rank 311th in mid-range jumpers attempted per game. Nerd favorites Alabama rank 344th. If I could point to one thing that sums up Tennessee's overall personality shift, it's that they're far more rim-and-three focused than ever before and that old dogs really can learn new tricks. (Note from Sean: Apparently, teams can stop shooting midrange jumpers. Someone get Barnes to tell Calipari)
The defense is more or less what it's always been but Barnes and staff are far more focused on eliminating attempts at the rim/forcing pull-up jumpers than ever before. I think a big part of that is the lineup versatility (you'd only really describe Plavsic as a classic stiff, whereas you could've described all of Plavsic/Fulkerson/Huntley-Hatfield like that a year ago), but they really do look a lot like 2018-19 Texas Tech or even that championship Baylor team.
What have Tennessee opponents done most successfully on offense and defense this season?
Tennessee's worst defensive outings - and you have to use that really relatively - have come against teams that take care of the ball well and do a good job at generating easy-ish twos with either a height advantage (like Arizona or Vanderbilt's Liam Robbins) or with really quick, twitchy guards (like Boogie Ellis of USC or K.J. Simpson of Colorado). Even then, it's not a universal formula. Kansas had a theoretical shooting advantage against Tennessee and got decimated from start to finish. Mississippi State had the best big on the floor in Tolu Smith and he scored nine points. I would note that Tennessee has yet to face a very good point guard or ball-handler in SEC play yet, but at the same time I don't know who that would be. Wade Taylor at A&M? Maybe Cason Wallace?
Offensively, Tennessee is at their best when they make shots. That's overly simplistic, but based on the data Tennessee does a great job of generating very good shots in pretty much every game. UT ranks 24th in America, per Synergy, at generating open catch-and-shoot threes. Shot Quality ranks them as a top-five offense. Rick Barnes has held probably five press conferences this year where he's described the offensive shot quality as excellent in a game where UT shot poorly. We've seen some serious regression to the mean as of late, though, which could be potentially misinterpreted as "they're growing up" or whatnot. Either way, thanks to the contributions of Aidoo, Plavsic, Phillips, and surprising freshman Tobe Awaka, they have a new 'hedge' of sorts in how dominant they've been on the offensive boards.
What concepts that contribute to winning and losing in college basketball do you believe are most misunderstood by fans and/or media?
Fans and media in general need to recognize the massive impact that shooting variance, game-over-game, has in an individual game's result. Let's say one team, as unlikely as this sounds, takes the exact same shots with the exact same quality from one game to the next. In the first game, they shot 50% from three; in the second, they shot 20%. One game will receive overly positive coverage; the other will get extremely negative coverage from fans and media alike. The problem is that the process was the exact same in both cases.
In what areas do you expect Kentucky to struggle the most against Tennessee?
Against top 100 competition, non-Tshiebwe players have been horrendous at finishing at the rim. Tshiebwe is 28-for-44 (63.6%); everyone else is 38-for-81 (46.9%). Predictably, they take a billion mid-range jumpers that they don't hit, too. But I think the larger problem is on defense and it's not close. This is a Kentucky defense that doesn't block shots like they used to because Tshiebwe isn't an elite rim protector, and the things Tennessee spams non-stop on offense - off-ball screens, spot-up threes, basket cuts - are all things Kentucky has serious issues defending. Kentucky ranks 12th in points allowed of 14 SEC teams on open threes; Tennessee ranks third in points scored among SEC teams on open threes.
What do you think Kentucky can have success doing against Tennessee?
For all the good Tennessee's defense does, it is still susceptible to backside threes when they overpursue. I don't know that Kentucky is positioned to take advantage of that a ton, but they do have four good shooters on the roster. This is also only the third real test Tennessee's faced as a post defense after Arizona and Mississippi State, and theoretically, Tshiebwe could wreak havoc against a Tennessee team that's still figuring out what it wants long-term at center. All that being said, Tennessee probably had a worse rim protection scheme last year and fared just fine against Oscar. Aside from that, Cason Wallace does have the potential of a guy that can take over a game, but the only time he's actually shown that was against Florida A&M.
What are some key X factors for the Kentucky-Tennessee matchup?
To be honest, how the game is officiated matters a lot. If officials are feeling frisky and want to call some of the physicality Tennessee gets away with on the perimeter, this could be a game where Zakai Zeigler or Santiago Vescovi find themselves in foul trouble. On the other hand, Tshiebwe got in foul trouble in the first half of the last two Tennessee games in 2021-22 and has been in foul trouble against seemingly every good opponent so far. Beyond that: does Tennessee hit their open threes? Can Kentucky generate more than usual? The other thing I'd look at is if Calipari unveils a new lineup. I'm a little surprised that he's essentially completely abandoned playing Wheeler, Wallace, and either Reeves or Fredrick all together. If he played all four at once as a small-ball option it would be fascinating.
What college basketball coaches/programs do you believe are doing smart or creative things to overachieve this season?
I adore how Dennis Gates and Missouri play; that's not a very talented roster on paper, but their decision to play the most chaotic style of basketball possible on both ends is extremely hard to prepare for or simulate on short turnarounds. I love Josh Schertz at Indiana State and think their system is a fascinating watch; he wants to play fast and never take mid-range jumpers. Defensively more people should be checking into what Hawaii and Eran Ganot are doing.
Is the color orange just naturally ugly or what?
Honestly yes, there is a reason the University of Tennessee apparel I own is almost entirely gray or black.
Many thanks to Will for participating in this! I highly recommend folks subscribe to Will’s work, it’s very good work and he’s a better writer than I am.