Tennessee Basketball: Combo Guards Are Failing the Vols

Tennessee basketball combo guards Shembari Phillips and Lamonte Turner are failing the Volunteers right now in their quest for the NCAA Tournament.

For Rick Barnes’s young Tennessee basketball team, the game plan on offense has been pretty simple the past few weeks.

Have your primary scorer be Robert Hubbs III in the paint and then Grant Williams or Admiral Schofield as the stretch four. When they draw attention, use the other guards for outside shooting while Kyle Alexander and Lew Evans make the hustle plays underneath.

Either Jordan Bone or Jordan Bowden are there to help out and set everybody up at point guard, and Lamonte Turner and Shembari Phillips are the combo guards.

More from Vols Basketball

Although Bone and Bowden are the point guards, Turner and Phillips have to make smart plays with the ball too to make this work.

But recently, when the three-point shots have not been falling, teams have crowded the paint against the Vols. Hubbs has drawn double teams, and the forwards haven’t been able to find lanes.

As a result, the Vols have trouble scoring. But it’s only gotten worse because of the terrible decisions that Turner and Phillips have been making. These two combo guards will recklessly drive to the basket trying to make plays if their outside shots aren’t falling. .

And it’s usually resulted in them running into a wall in the paint and forcing a terrible shot up or surrendering a terrible turnover.

That only adds to the awfulness of the offense.

And with Bowden out on Wednesday, it all came apart against the Vanderbilt Commodores in their 67-56 loss.

Phillips and Turner finished a combined 3-for-19 with five turnovers and eight total points.

It’s okay if you’re shooting poorly from three. That happens sometimes. But take out the three-point shots, and they combined to go 3-for-13. That’s still atrocious, with many of those misses coming on ill-advised shots inside the paint.

Turner, who was supposed to be this year’s Kevin Punter, needed to fill in for Bowden Wednesday. He failed miserably.

Off the bench he finished 1-for-5 with 2 points and two turnovers. There’s no excuse for that terrible play, and the atrocious offensive play Wednesday falls solely on them.

This is not to say these two don’t hustle or aren’t trying. On defense, they have been great, and they were great against Vanderbilt.

Also, Phillips and Turner had seven and six rebounds respectively as guards. That’s impressive, and they deserve credit for their work ethic.

They also have handles, especially Turner.

In fact, given their age, most of this blame could fall on Rick Barnes for not coaching them up well.

But we still have to call it out.

Take away their failures, and the Vols would have at least shot over 30 percent on Wednesday.

That’s not great, but it can be enough to win a game with solid defense if your shots aren’t falling. Instead, Turner and Phillips filled the eyes of fans at Thompson-Boling Arena with terrible decision-making on offense, and they may have cost Tennessee basketball an NCAA Tournament spot in the process.

Home/Vols Basketball