Posts tagged Tennessee

I started this write-up immediately after the game last night. File 13’d it several times. I decided to what Coach Fox had to say before I spewed my knee-jerk observations.

Exile, borrowing from Charles Dickens, may have put it best, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

I am not one to second guess coaches often. Okay, that may not be true where our football coordinators are concerned. I have, however, tried not to second guess Coach Fox.

I don’t know what goes on in practice. I don’t know what goes on in the locker-room. I do know what I am witnessing during the games. I also understand I may be about to lose a few readers.

Ricky McPhee is a fan favorite, and for good reason. He’s a favorite of mine. How can anyone not root for the kid. He’s has a compelling story, gives 100% every time he steps on the floor and he can knock down an open three.

Ricky McPhee has become a huge liability. Coach Fox was forced to deal with that last night. McPhee has often led the team in minutes. Last night, his minutes were drastically trimmed.

Despite only scoring 9 points, McPhee had one of his best shooting nights hitting on 3 of 5, 3 of 4 from beyond the arc. The problem is, we just can’t afford to leave him on the court. Everybody in the league has enough tape on us to know why.

Teams have been going after McPhee, on both ends.  They start the dribble-drive on his side. They trap when he has the ball.

Coach Pearl started two point guards last night in what I believe was an attempt to further leverage this mis-match.

We, for reasons I don’t know, opened in a straight man-to-man defense. The absolute worst defense to have McPhee play. He simply does not have the “quicks” to match up against SEC “2” guards, let alone point guards.

The problem is without McPhee on the floor we have no exterior scoring threat. We have guys that can knock down threes on occasion, but aside from McPhee, Trey Thompkins is the only consistent threat. Teams will give Thompkins the three all night to keep him out of the paint.

It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.

Coach Fox attempted to mitigate things by inserting Ebuka Anyaorah for McPhee early last night. Ebuka responded by hitting a three for Georgia’s first score.

Ebuka was inserted, I believe, for defense, not offense. He is athletic but his ball handling skills remain a work in progress. His defense earned him the same amount of minutes McPhee played.

Despite hitting a three on his first attempt, Ebuka does not extend the opponent’s defense on the perimeter. This not only collapses the defense on our big men, it also closes the cutting lanes for Travis Leslie.

In summary, until we find a true “2” guard that can knock down the open three, handle the ball against the press and play solid man-to-man defense, Coach Fox is bringing knives to gunfights.

I applaud Coach Fox for trying something different. I hope he will continue to experiment with the lineup. I even have a suggestion.

I would like to see Travis Leslie spend some time at the shooting guard and Thompkins move to the “small” forward spot. Jackson, Barnes, and Price can rotate through the pivot and power forward spots.

This lineup wouldn’t add a great deal of offensive punch, but it would force teams to respect Thompkins outside, possibly opening up some cutting lanes for Leslie. We would lose a few rebounds from Thompkins, but create some amazing match-up problems for the other guy.

Of course, this line-up would exaggerate our depth issues, but it doesn’t have to be played for forty minutes.

True, I am grasping at straws, but at this point I believe Coach Fox is also. There is only so much he can do given the roster limitations we have. Our strength is big men. I say we play our long suit.

What do you say?