1. There's no real silver lining to be found. Scoring under 40 in back to back games is wholly unacceptable, regardless of the opponents. 2. Jarnell Stokes simply has to play more aggressively. Akil Mitchell outworked him all night and the results showed it. 3. Joe Harris is exactly the player UT is missing. He understands what is and what is not a good shot. 4. Trae Golden is going to have to abandon the playmaker role and look for his own offense. This team is too limited in scoring options to have him attempting to set up guys who can't make shots. 5. D'Montre Edwards is playing out of control on the offensive end. His shot selection merits a benching until he makes better decisions. 6. Jordan McRae and Josh Richardson are not performing at the level this team has to have from them offensively. If they aren't combining for 20-25 a night, this group is going to struggle to see 60. 7. The offensiive woes have now been exposed against the zone and man defense. There are schematic changes that need to be made, but guys on scholarship need to occasionally make open shots. 8. Until Jeronne Maymon gets back, this team has to run more. It's readily apparent this group can't consistently score in the halfcourt. 9. Tennessee responded well and cleaned up defensive lapses after the last significant break. They have to make some serious repairs on offense between now and taking the floor against Wichita State. 10. There's no margin for error left in the nonconference portion of the schedule. If they don't sweep the upcoming homestand, the out of league performance will be an abject failure.
As underwhelming as Kenny has been here he probably turns out better than everyone save Stokes and maybe Richardson that Martin has brought in so far. I hope he starts pulling in better role players these next few seasons.
Part of the problem is they are not executing the offense. The other part is they have precious little in the way of offense creators. Hat's right - they are reasonably good in transition. So get them moving Zo. Change your stripes so they can change theirs. It also seems like Zo has gone away from what he said he did at MO State. Shorter bench. He's got Pearl disease about giving out too many minutes to marginal players with poor substitution groupings IMO. He played 11 guys and gave out 60 minutes to the bench. I know he's looking for dependable depth and sombody to score, but he's losing games he needs to win in the process. The top guys get plenty of rest between games in December so fatigue is not an issue. Bring the offense through Golden until Maymon gets back and let McRae do his thing in transition. They have got to have more minutes with his top 7 guys to get used to playing with each other to get the offense moving. But what do I know - just an armchair coach. Zo will figure it out.
I think hat brought up a good point I was noticing the last two games. We play way too slow. Golden walks the ball up the court every time and displays no urgency in setting up the offense. It's as if we're expecting to turn a switch half way into the shot clock, which is ridiculous. I don't see why the ball isn't brought up the court immediately so as to probe for easy baskets. The PG can always pull back to start the offense, but it's much easier to score in transition than to have to continually break down a set defense.
