Tennessee Basketball: 3 Keys to victory at Georgia
By Ian McBride
Tennessee basketball travels to Athens to take on the UGA Dawgs Saturday. Here are three keys for the UT Volunteers to win the game.
The Tennessee basketball team makes its way to Athens on Saturday in a 6 p.m. contest that will air on the SEC Network. This will be first of two matches between the two teams, with the second being Tennessee’s last regular season contest taking place on March 3rd.
This game is certainly not Tennessee’s most difficult match-up on paper. However, easy SEC wins are really not a thing this season. This one should be a good road win for the Vols if they can manage to lock down a few areas.
After a close game against the South Carolina Gamecocks earlier this week, they’ll need to tighten some things up to seal the win at Georgia. Let’s take a look at their three three keys to victory.
1. Contain Yante Maten
Containing Yante Maten is the most obvious key and is the common sense point of attack. Maten is Georgia’s most potent offensive threat and the team’s best rebounder. The next best scoring option for Bulldog squad is guard William Jackson at just 8.8 ppg. Odds of obtaining a victory will be greatly increased if Grant Williams can keep a tight grip on Maten in the post. It would really lock Georgia down if they can attack him and put him in some foul trouble.
2. Guard play must be improved
The threat from the Dawgs is somewhat limited. However, the Tennessee basketball guards have shown an uncanny ability to make detrimental mistakes. The Vols’ guards must avoid shooting themselves in the foot. Jordan Bone and company must do a better job with their shot selection and feeding the post. This group should be fairly “locked in” given the critiques from Rick Barnes in his post-game presser after the South Carolina game. Most of all, the guards need to do a much better job of ‘seeing’ the floor and capitalizing on what Georgia gives them.
3. Better ball movement; positive assist to turnover ratio
Tennessee basketball was one of the best in the country at distributing the ball for the first half of the season. However, in the past three games, this team has posted an overall negative assist to turnover ratio. They had a season-low 7 assists against Alabama last week. Still, the Vols average 16.3 assists per game and have posted over 20 assists seven times this season. They need to move this needle back towards that mid-teens average and keep the turnover total below their average of 13 per game if they want to keep winning.
The Vols also need to keep in mind that anyone that watches the game film will notice their struggles against the zone. Georgia will undoubtedly keep them busy switching up the defense. So Tennessee basketball needs to improve in moving the ball quickly and exploiting the gaps in the defense. This young team could also do a better job of seeing the mismatches that a zone always brings. The Volunteer guards dribbled into trouble quite a few times against the Gamecocks and the Tide.
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If the Vols show up hungry and ready to play, this should be a win. But Tennessee does need to be ready for a team playing above themselves. Scalping a top 20 team is an attractive prize for a team unlikely to make the big dance. Expect the Bulldogs to play above their norm to try and stay in it. I believe the Vols will pull this one out 71-63.