NCAA: Trial and turmoil in Tennessee

Basketball is--and was always meant to be--a finesse game, a display of movement, passing and shooting. Seeing teams with good free throw shooters and agile offensive players makes the game enjoyable to watch.

In this day and age, however--long after the days of the peach basket--the increased physical prowess of players, along with the enormous personal and team pressures that exist on and off the court, have transformed big-time basketball into a game that, even at its finesse-oriented best, naturally involves plenty of contact and demands intense hunger, particularly at the defensive end of the court.

In this college basketball season--and in recent seasons as well--no team has demonstrated the need for nastiness, some sour to go with the cream, more than Jerry Green's Tennessee Volunteers. Pure teams--as much as it might pain basketball purists to say it--must acquire a hardened edge, a rough dimension to their overall team personality, to win at the highest level. This component has been missing from Knoxville for the last few seasons.

Since Green became the head coach at Tennessee, the Vols have enjoyed considerable success, much more than they ever had before his arrival. High NCAA Tournament seedings and the regular expectation of a Sweet 16 appearance, if not more, were unheard of in Knoxville before Green, a former Roy Williams assistant and a successful coach at Oregon, came to Knoxville in the fall of 1997. Taking a team that finished 11-16 in the '96-97 campaign, Green's first team at UT won 20 games and reached the NCAA Tournament. In the following two seasons, the Vols duplicated those feats while advancing another round in each Big Dance. (The Vols lost in the first round in '98, the second round in '99, and the regional semifinals last year.)

Under Green, the extent of the Vols' achievements has resulted from their ability to shoot well from all areas of the floor, including the free throw line. Green's Tennessee teams have employed a halfcourt offensive that places a premium on spacing, movement and individual agility. At their best, the Vols are a fun team to watch. They play the game without plodding and they prefer shotmaking skill over brute force.

Yet, for all of their success, Green and the Vols have been plagued by the monster of expectations that has accompanied both his program's newfound fortunes and the considerable talent at his disposal. Last year, Tennessee entered the South Regional Semifinals as the highest remaining seed of the four teams in the region. Playing in Austin, Tex., at the home of another UT school with an all-orange look, Green's team--spared from having to play heavies such as Stanford, Cincinnati and co-Big Ten champion Ohio State--had a golden opportunity, a yellow brick road of a bracket, to get to the Final Four.

With a seven-point lead over North Carolina with four minutes left in the regional semis, the Volunteers seemed set to reach rarified air: playing for the Final Four in a regional final. But just when the view from Rocky Top looked great, the Vols' lack of a shut-the-door, no-soup-for-you killer instinct came back to haunt them. Tennessee promptly let down on defense, enabling Jason Capel and Joseph Forte to slash and score at will in the final minutes and carry the Tar Heels to victory. For all of the Vols' accomplishments in Green's tenure, they've lacked a finishing kick at the end of games late in the season. Heck, they've lacked a finishing kick at the end of seasons, period.

Not only have the Vols struggled in the NCAAs (their exit from the Big Dance in 1999 came courtesy of a 30-point loss to 12th-seeded Southwest Missouri State), they've also struggled in the late-season endurance test presented by the SEC Tournament. In each of the past three seasons, Green's Vols have lost in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals, in their first game of the tournament. In each of the past two seasons, the Vols entered the league tourney as the top seed from the SEC East, only to lose to huge underdogs (Mississippi State in '99, South Carolina last year).

This season, with every key cog returning from last year's Sweet 16 bunch, Green's troops were tabbed the consensus pick to win the SEC, and rightfully so. Moreover, the Vols backed up the hype through their first 19 games. In mid-January, Tennessee stood at 17-2 with a #4 ranking and a legitimate shot at the #1 seed in the South Region. But then something very simple happened: the Vols had to play road games in the SEC.

Road league games have always posed top teams with classic tests of will, determination and effort. The fullness of truth in this statement becomes even more apparent with each successive season in college basketball. Winning conference games on the road is so hard that a tough-minded, fist-fighting, rebound-ripping team such as Michigan State has lost three Big Ten road games already this season.

How have the Vols fared in SEC road games this year? Try 1-5, with a five-game losing streak. Try 1-5, with the lone win coming in overtime over a middle-of-the-pack Auburn team whose best days (with Chris Porter) are behind it.

This past week, the Vols returned home for mammoth contests against Kentucky and Florida, two teams who have maximized their abilities in March. (See a trend here? Rick Pitino disciples Tubby Smith and Billy Donovan get their teams peaking at the right time, just as Pitino himself did at Kentucky and Providence. Green's teams dive in March, just like--and again, it has to be said, no matter how distasteful it may be--Roy Williams, his mentor at Kansas.) Rejuvenated by home cooking, the Vols had a chance to reclaim a high postseason seeding, not to mention their personal pride and their preseason reputation. The writing was on the wall for a team in search of restoration and recovery.

The results? Two losses, two abysmal defensive performances (an average of 95.5 points per game), and two choruses of boos from the rightly disappointed fans in the Thompson-Boling Arena.

Tennessee has an embarrassment of riches and finesse-oriented skills. Yet, the direction of the Volunteers' 2001 season is richly embarrassing. The only nastiness to be found in Knoxvillee is the mood now enveloping the Vols in the wake of their downward spiral to a 5-7 mark in the SEC. The Vols should still make the NCAAs, but after holding a #4 ranking in January, the Vols expected--and had the talent--to gain a #1 seed. Now, it looks as though the Vols will be playing a #1 seed in the second round as an 8 or 9 seed.

Even if this talented team finds a way to scrape by in the first round, a blowout loss to a top seed in the second round will be a grave disappointment for Jerry Green and his soft ballclub.

When you get called soft in basketball these days, you're not ready to win big games. And though the "soft" label carries a big stigma with it--David Robinson had to unfairly bear that tag throughout his career--the Tennessee Volunteers deserve it. Whenever the chips are down, or whenever the stakes are high, Jerry Green's Tennessee ballclubs fold up the tent defensively and mentally.

Again, it makes me wince to say such a thing, because I love finesse-oriented basketball that is close to the game's historic roots (and because I respect Roy Williams as a coach as well).

But like many things in life that are hard to say, it has to be said that the Tennessee Volunteers are soft and weak-willed. Some tough things will have to be said by Jerry Green to his players if he wants to turn around a season that is spiraling out of control.