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The first two times that Kentucky played Tennessee — and won both games — the team with the highest rated defense was Tennessee.
When the teams play Friday night in the Sweet Sixteen in Indianapolis, Kentucky comes into the game with the higher rated defense in the last month and has even ranked second best on the BartTorvik through the first two games in the NCAA Tournament behind only Houston.
Tennessee went 11-for-45 and 3-for-18 from 3-point range in its two losses against Kentucky. In its second NCAA tourney game against UCLA, the Vols made 11 3’s.
“Chaz Lanier is such a problem,” Pope said on his weekly radio show. “[Zakai] Zeigler is such a problem. They have a bevy of talented scores that can go create their own basket. They run a bunch of actions.
“What we’re kind of seeing in film is they’re getting a little more freedom with how they do things and what they do. So us just trying to dial in as best we can to the game plan of how they score, how they operate, what they’re looking for is something we’ll do.”
Tennessee held UCLA to 58 points and 36 percent shooting in its win in Rupp Arena. Kentucky scored 78 and 75 points in its two wins over the Vols and went 12-for-24 from 3-point range in each game.
“Tennessee is one of the most consistent teams that you’ll see. They’re the top-ranked, number one or two depending on what metric you want to look at, defensive team in the entire country,” Pope said on his radio show.
“And they do it because they’re insanely consistent with what they do. They’re very aggressive. They put on a ton of pressure. They blitz ball screens and hard show ball screens. They give you nothing easy, and they’re a lockdown defensive team. They’ve been the same team all season long.”
Pope said Kentucky has to move the ball, something that should be easier with Lamont Butler healthy. He did not play in the win in Knoxville and was injured midway of the win in Lexington and did not return.
“For us, the key has been how much movement we can get. And it’s a battle, right? That’s the fight,” Pope said. “Their pressure wants to keep you stationary, and how aggressive can we be with our movement, on and off the ball.”
2 Responses
We are playing our best basketball of the whole season right now. We are more healthy right now than we have been all season and there are no excuses right now. So whoever is the better team will win tomorrow night. Its almost impossible to beat a top 15 team 3 times in one season but for some reason I think we get it done. Tennessee hates losing to Kentucky almost more than anything. So they will not go out without a fight. I look for Carr to have a big game. If Williams dunks the damn ball with authority he can’t be stopped and I think he’s the only person that doesn’t seem to know that. If he hasn’t gotten the picture by now it will never happen. We need him to gobble up rebounds and play great defense. If Butler Oweh and Williams play great defense we are almost unstoppable. We need Brea to continue to be hot from 3. We also need out bench to be good. They don’t have to be great they just have to give the starters some rest and not fall off a cliff while they are in the game. Maybe Chandler Perry Noah and Almonor can knock down five 3 pointers or so. If we can get a rise out of our bench it will go a long way. I think whoever wins this game will make it to the final 4. Both teams are final 4 capable teams and have had brutal schedules. So both teams are battle tested.
We have shown that we can play defense…when we want to. Will we want to play defense tonight? We shall soon see.