March Madness: Every possible Vols concern was exploited in win over Colgate

The Tennessee Volunteers held on to beat the Colgate Raiders in the first round of March Madness. But every possible UT NCAA Tournament concern arose.

Let’s have a bit of fun, shall we? Go back and take a look at two articles we did related to Tennessee basketball heading into this year’s March Madness, and compare them to what happened in the Vols’ 77-70 first-round win over the Colgate Raiders.

The first article is the five keys for UT to have success in the NCAA Tournament. After that, read about the five ways Colgate could have beaten the Vols in the first round. Basically everything we warned could work against Rocky Top came true on Friday.

Starting with the keys, the first one was play like an underdog. Did they do that? Well, they went to sleep after a 16-point lead and let Colgate come back and take the lead in the second half. That’s exactly what they’ve been doing all year when a team was gunning for them: Take the opening minutes of the second half off. It happened last Sunday against the Auburn Tigers.

What about shooting over 50 percent? Well, to get there, the goal would be to get Grant Williams the ball early and don’t settle for too many three-point shots. Instead, Williams had seven touches, and the Vols shot 26 three-pointers. That’s “March Madness” decision-making.

Then there’s not letting one guy go off to beat them. Well, Jordan Burns dropped 32 points on Friday on 12-of-20 shooting, and he went 8-of-13 for three. So much for not letting one guy go off in a game.

Did Kyle Alexander rebound and play defense? He played a bit of defense, but he only had five rebounds. And Colgate didn’t give him a chance to play much defense anyway since they took so many outside shots.

The final key was to get Jordan Bowden going. And, to be fair, that’s the one key that the Vols did adhere to. They did exactly the opposite of everything else. Meanwhile, look at the ways we said Colgate could beat them.

Rick Barnes’s coaching was one of the ways. He has struggled in the NCAA Tournament in recent years, and Friday just looked like a repeat of that. Another one was the psychological edge for Colgate. Anybody who watched that game could easily see they were more excited to play.

Two underdog ways we said the Raiders could win was rebounding. They lost their tallest and best player in the second half in  Rapolas Ivanauskas, but they still held their own on the boards, only getting outrebounded 35-31. Ivanauskas’s injury was going to limit those.

But the biggest key was their three-point shooting. We warned that the Raiders can get hot any time. And that’s exactly what they did in this game, mainly thanks to Burns. Colgate was 15-of-29 from the three-point line, continuing their reign as the hottest three-point shooting team in the U.S. and nearly pulling off a major March Madness upset.

So what does all this say about the Vols? Well, there is a positive to it. Barnes’s team did almost exactly the opposite of what it needed to do to win, and Colgate did exactly what it needed to do to win. Yet UT still held on despite a furious run by the Raiders in the second half.

However, you could also look at this as a bit of a concern. After all, this was the second game in which the Vols looked highly disappointing, and with the exception of a red-hot two and a half minute run against the Kentucky Wildcats, they have left a lot to be desired in their last three outings.

With a tough team like the Iowa Hawkeyes up next, how are they going to handle things? They still have trouble getting Williams the ball inside when teams collapse on him, and that’s exactly what Iowa will do throughout the game. These are things Barnes has to figure out.

Regardless of any of this, though, the Vols advance in the NCAA Tournament. It wasn’t pretty, and they did literally almost everything wrong. But they still managed to pull out the victory to get to a second round game on Sunday. Do they have weaknesses that have been exposed, though? Or are they just not focused enough at times? We’ll find out soon enough.