Tennessee basketball: Will the turnover help Lamonte Turner’s game?

The Tennessee basketball team is going to look much different next season. Will the roster turnover help or hurt Lamonte Turner’s game?

Lamonte Turner was one of the most up and down players for the Tennessee basketball team last season. There were games like West Virginia and Auburn (SEC Tournament Championship) where Turner scored over 40 points and was connecting from the three-point line. However, there were other games like against Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Alabama where he wasn’t so great.

Of course, merely making the argument strictly based on stats isn’t fair. Kyle Alexander never filled the stat sheet, but he made lasting impacts on the game.

For Lamonte it’s different, the guy can ball. And, there are other times where it looks like he doesn’t understand the offensive side of the game.

Shooter shoot. That’s what they say.

The only problem with playing that style of play for Turner is he was shooting too much of the wrong shots. Look, it’s clear he’s got one of the best outside jumpers on the team. He can heat up and loves being the the guy in clutch moments. But, it’s also clear he lacks the knowledge of good shot selection…sometimes.

Before, the haters hate, Turner did have a shoulder injury that he was working through. However, my knock on his shooting percentage was never about the percentage, although it was horrendous at times, it was about the shot selection to get to the awful percentage. The guy can shoot, in 2017, Turner shot 42.5 percent in SEC play. But, those were smart shots.

Tennessee lost six games last season and in most of those games Turner pressed which led to bad shot selection. Against Kansas, Lamonte was just 2-for-9 from deep. He was 0-for-7 against Kentucky in Rupp Arena and 1-for-7 from three against LSU.

Remember LSU was the game Turner took the last shot ending Tennessee’s chances to get the win. But, it wasn’t just the last shot, he took horrible shots the entire game.

Add a 5-for-14 performance in two games against Auburn plus a 3-for-6 game against Purdue and Turner’s three-point percentage in Tennessee’s six losses was 25.6 percent.

That’s not good.

What makes it worse is Turner is a good shooter but struggled with poor shot selection.

Back to the title question, does the turnover from the Vols roster help or hurt Lamonte’s game? Truthfully, I say both.

A lot of the scoring burden will be placed on Lamonte. He will also have to be the guy to get the offense running their stuff, we think. When you think about that, it makes sense for Turner to shoot until he gets hot.

However, I think we see a more relax Turner that lets the game come to him.

Lamonte is a volume shooter and when he’s on, he’s lights out. If you watch film you’ll see he never gets “lucky.” His shots fall thanks to good shot selection and that’s something you’ll see more from next season from the veteran guard.