Tennessee Game Thread

[NYC-bluejay]

Tough loss, but after the way this season went I didn’t expect much out of this team in March anyway. After sitting with it, not too broken up about it like I was last year.

At the end of the day these dudes are getting paid 300k+ to go out there, stand around and play soft. Don’t know if I’ll ever care as much as I did when they were just doing it for the school. Let em move on and let’s start fresh with young guys like Green.

“Stand around and play soft”

GTFOH…

What do you call the lack of off-ball movement in most of the first half? Kalk trying to throw a ridiculous pass across the whole court, or when he got the ball rolling to the hoop and passed it to green who had nothing he could do with it instead of dunking or laying it up?

[3ontheway]

With no bench whatsoever,

Jasen green would like a word.

I meant on the balance of the year. Kudos to Green for some late season fantastic contributions. But it's hard to get past where we did with about the 350th ranked bench production in D1. Speaks to how excellent our trio and 2nd half of season Ashworth were.

[jaysfor3]

Of course I would like to have gone deeper in this tournament, but this team exceeded my expectations.

It was a very memorable season with some terrific wins.

Going to 3 Sweet 16’s and an Elite 8 in the last 4 seasons is pretty damn good from days of yore.

Really interested in who’s coming back, new additions, and growth from the bench and will be locked in as it develops…

[GoatGibbs]

Man just super appreciative. It’s easy as fans to live in the moment and want a better high.

This program four year ago was looking for one night like this. Just soak in the feeling. We might never be back. I hope we are, it looks like we will be, but I think the accomplishment becoming the expectation minimizes how DIFFICULT this is.

I love this program and I’m proud to be a bluejay. Omaha deserves better and has accomplished so much. These kids work harder than anyone. I’ll miss Ryan, Trey and Baylor. True warriors for that jersey

[bluejayfan00]

Man just super appreciative. It’s easy as fans to live in the moment and want a better high.

This program four year ago was looking for one night like this. Just soak in the feeling. We might never be back. I hope we are, it looks like we will be, but I think the accomplishment becoming the expectation minimizes how DIFFICULT this is.

I love this program and I’m proud to be a bluejay. Omaha deserves better and has accomplished so much. These kids work harder than anyone. I’ll miss Ryan, Trey and Baylor. True warriors for that jersey

This x100

Also, the section of the fanbase who parades around with their burner accounts on twitter talking about how we’ve accomplished nothing of substance and how all our March runs have been cake walks can kick rocks and pound sand.

Posts like this one from Gibbs need to be shared everywhere, well said

[cufan10]

Heartbroken, the core deserved a final four after getting robbed last year. Disappointing for Trey's likely last game as a Jay to be such a poor one. We were a few plays from coming out on top including if that lousy stretch to start the half had been slightly less lousy. Would have liked that extra position from the blown out-of-bounds call. Just been thinking about what could have been and wondering if Nembhard and Kaluma have any regrets about leaving. Could have had a final-four run and even potentially a National Championship instead Nembhard had what qualifies as a poor season for Gonzaga standards and Kaluma did not even make the dance. Hopefully one day the program can get that final four glory.

[BirdBoy]

All I ask for is some depth this offseason. Having a spark off the bench in a game like this would have been great.

[section221jay]

One 4 or 5 minute stretch was enough to kill the dream. Keep that 18-0 run to 10-0 and maybe it's a different outcome. Ugh.

I have come to accept that Trey is probably gone but I still don't know where to. It isn't the NBA. I suppose he can get some good money on the open market...that reality is sad but that's life in the cillege game these days.

Baylor is an all time Jay even with only playing 2 years. What a freaking player! So thankful he came back...they don't even make the tourney possibly without him but with him tyey were a top 10 team that, without a bad 5 min, could have been staring at some serious glory.

Fun year. Frustrating at times but that's every team at this stage I guess. Hopefully, we get back this way again soon.

[Chicagojayfan]

Tennessee reminds me a bit of the SD State teams in how they want to play D. Their losses have a few similarities along those lines, they didn't lose any games with 15 or fewer fouls called on them, and are 2-3 with 22 or more fouls called on them. We've also played those types of defensive teams in the BE, so we can beat teams like that, even if we don't get a tight whistle, but it will be much harder for us if the refs ignore the whistles like they did with SD State

Rebounding is another similarity for the teams that beat them. In the 8 losses they lost the rebounding battle 6 times and the other 2 were close enough to be a push

We'll need to shoot more around our norm to win this one. Purdue beat them with an eFG% of .389, but demolished them on the boards and got to the FT line a lot in the game (30 fouls called on Tennessee and 48 FT's by Purdue.. ouch)

They route a ton of shots through Knecht (6-6) so we will be trying to run him off the line from 3 PT. Rare you see a guy go up in PPG/Points per minute when jumping up in conferences, but his USG at Northern Colorado was 19.8% and 28.2% and is now 32.1% (by comparison Trey leads CU at 26.7% this year) - their Big Aidoo gets a lot of dunks and shots at the rim from their 3 PT shooting, but was nullified (fouled out vs. Edey) so that will be a matchup to watch

My keys are the same as they've been most of this year. Rebound and limit turnovers. Do that and we have a good chance of getting enough possessions to have a bounce back game with our shooting

Game pretty much came down to the things I thought it would. In these keys:

1. Refs mostly ignored the whistle, favoring them (if you don't think the style of reffing favored their style of play, then I can't think of any way to explain the obvious to you). We often dealt with it, but during the long stretch for them, it particularly hurt us as well. Given them calling the game that way, we needed our A game and got a mixed B game instead (some stretches of A, but too many stretches of C/D play)

2. Offensive rebounds/rebounding. We were under 50%, but respectable in general, but also gave up 12 offensive boards particularly some key ones down the stretch when we'd made it close after their run

3. Turnovers - 10 pts off of turnovers, almost all in the first half?. When we could have been creating some space early in the game, we turned it over and almost every turnover turned into points

Offense

We did amazingly well on offense given that one of our most needed players inexplicably had a terrible night shooting. Some that due to Tennessee's defense, but some just him missing a lot of shots he normally makes. but he also had a few games this season where he really struggled to make shots

Jacob posted out a number that said "Combine Creighton's three extended scoring droughts and the Jays scored a total of 2 points in 14:29 of game time. Ball game right there." but that also meant that in the rest of the game, we shot the ball pretty lights out.

Usually 110.5 offensive rating, and a .543 eFG% is going to bring home a win, BUT

Defense

Our Defense is what cost us, or rather, the Defense w/ Turnovers w/ Offensive Boards cost us last night
eFG% for Tennessee was .500 last night, 11th worst of their season (even with James hitting 3's he just normally hasn't hit this year). Normally holding a team to .500 eFG% is a win for us, but they ended up with a 120.8 offensive rating (our 3rd worst game of the season), mostly because they scored on so many of the turnovers and offensive boards.

they were 10/32 mid range, and 11/24 from 3 PT range... One of the reason's Mac likes the style of D we play is that it often controls the things you can control. In this case, we got the mid-range 2's and shut them down, but they hit the 3's and when we added fuel to the fire with the turnovers/offensive rebounds, it let them have a bit too much for us to win

Individual stuff:
Baylor - what a great game and a great career for us. He's the example of how to spend an offseason getting better at what a player needed to improve now (hope Miller's paying attention)
Trey - amazing season, but just didn't have it last night. The missed layup at the end, pretty much showed the kind of game it was for him, and really on both ends as he just didn't appear to be himself on D either. Doesn't sound like he's coming back, but would a year of S&C like Baylor did benefit him enough in the draft?
Kalk - effective, but a game where we really needed him to be very assertive and he didn't show up the way he has most of the season. Can another year develop his post game enough offensively?
Ashworth - The kind of shooting game we wanted from him, just wasn't enough. When Trey was struggling, I thought we needed to hunt more shots for him. He was also instrumental in pushing the ball in transition before Tenn. could set up (4-1 assist/to also). Some things I think he can work on with S&C this offseason, and with higher usage and Mac setting up a bit of structure to get him shots, he could be a very unique weapon for us next year
Miller - made a few plays, I thought the early 3 was a great sign, but when ball movement was tough, we weren't able to free up him (or anyone) - hope he watched Baylor this offseason as he needs 10+ more lbs of muscle and to work a ton on his handle and dribble-drive. My feeling is that he's a 3 more than a 4 (not that it makes a huge amount of difference for us)
Bello - last night wasn't his type of game with the type of players Tennessee had to match up with him, but he's a great teammate on a great team. Will he be an assistant coach for Mac someday?
Green - another really excellent game by Green and shows us what is coming for the future with him. I believe Green, Miller, and Traudt are all going to be excellent players for us next year. They need to do the Baylor offseason to re-tool their bodies and their games, but whatever positions they play, I think they'll be good

Summary:
For me I was disappointed we ended up seeing Tennessee. Like SDSt last year, they are a team that plays that style and dares the refs to make calls. It's a bit like referee roulette and I was hopeful they'd hit a game where they got a standard whistle and shoot badly enough to lose before us, but they get Purdue so they likely go away. There were a number of other matchups in the Sweet 16 that would have been better for us (I think we beat Zaga, and likely have a good shot against Purdue, for instance)

While it sucks we didn't get to the Elite 8 or Final 4, I think this team's road in the tourney was harder than last years. Outside of not getting a friendly whistle last year against SD State we could have waltzed into the final 4 with wins over Princeton and SD State. Instead this year we played a super hot Oregon team and then a real matchup problem with Tennessee

Kenpom has us at 11 this year, w/ 9th offense and 26th defense vs. last year at 12th and w/ 23rd offense and 11th defense and that feels about correct to me. I know a lot were skeptical, but Mac had a good roster and the team did a great job to getting back to being the same level of team we had last year (IMO, the 16 vs. last 8 was more luck than skill based this year versus last year), and it was a real pleasure seeing this team grow and develop this year

Now we get to try to survive the crazy portal season and see what next year's roster looks like

[Jaysfan100]

I will say.

In 2021 we saw zaga in the sweet 16 who was runner up that season .
Kansas in 2022 who won it all.
San Diego state last season in the elite 8 who was runner up.

I wouldn’t be shocked if Tenn ended up runner up this season as well. I hope they do so I can bring up the only teams that can knock the jays out of the tourney are teams that go all the way.