Tennessee basketball’s poor play vs. zone in opener is alarming

The Tennessee basketball Volunteers’ half-court offense struggled against the Colorado Buffaloes.

It’s only one game, and Tennessee basketball obviously had a lot of disruptions heading into the year. However, in their 56-47 season-opening win over the Colorado Buffaloes, the Vols had a major issue scoring against a standard 2-3 zone defense.

After their 17-2 start, Tad Boyle’s zone left the Vols lost. They allowed Colorado to outscore them 22-14 the rest of the half, and the only reason they held them off in the second half was due to elite defense, nice plays in transition and a solid shooting night from the three-point line.

But even those two things couldn’t keep them from shooting an abysmal 35.8 percent from the field, one percentage point worse from three. That’s evidence of not being able to break a zone out of a half-court set.

There’s no way around it. This is alarming. Defenders will point out that a huge reason for the hype behind Tennessee basketball are the two five-star freshmen, Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer. Rick Barnes pointing out that the COVID issues limited their ability to develop more than anybody will fuel that point.

However, Johnson nor Spriner started the game. Both came off the bench as momentum boosts but were not the focal point of the offense. The Vols had four starters back from a year ago all in their starting lineup on Tuesday. That included their center and leading scorer in John Fulkerson, their athletic wing in Yves Pons and their point guard in Santiago Vescovi.

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A senior center who can score, an athletic wing who commands attention and an experienced point guard is the exact formula needed to break up such a zone. The Vols were never able to do it. Oh, and Josiah Jordan-James, an athletic combo guard, was the other returning starter.

When you add in the fact that the new starter was Victor Bailey Jr.,a three-point specialist, there is no reason Tennessee basketball should have struggled. Bailey is an experienced player, as he transferred from the Oregon Ducks and redshirted last year. So he’s played two years at the college level and spent another learning Barnes’ system.

Now, if you want to say that those players were held back by the stop and go practices, that’s fine. But that would actually contradict what Barnes said one day before. Barnes pretty much said that all the experienced players improved dramatically because they did what they were supposed to do during the COVID shutdowns. Here are exact quotes from his press conference Monday.

"“I do think the older guys can handle it, more so than the younger guys. Our younger guys, the stops and starts have definitely affected them more in terms of their recall and being able to understand what we’re doing.”…“Our older guys, they’ve been able to handle the stops and starts better than the younger guys. The older guys, they came into the gym and did what they were supposed to do.”"

Those quotes are as clear as they can be. Barnes is all but assuring everybody that these stops and starts haven’t affected the older guys. With two seniors and a redshirt junior in the starting lineup and four starters back from a year ago, that would mean that they should be ready to break a zone right out of the gate.

To be fair, this was just one game. The Vols have plenty of time to get better, and we should also mention that Barnes and his staff didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for Colorado’s defense. They were initially looking toward facing the UT Martin Skyhawks.

Still, it’s a simple zone, and Tennessee basketball has a veteran team with the personnel to handle it. Johnson and Springer have an excuse. Nobody else who played on Tuesday does. The Vols should be one of the most-ready teams this year to score out of their half-court sets against any complex defense, and that didn’t happen against Colorado.