First of all, I DVR'd due to not getting home from work till 7. So no fizzleing commercials.
But oh yeah, the game itself, or should I say our new coach's team. I saw at least three very positive things.
1. We were disciplined and focused and we did much better than I feared. I was afraid we would continue our tourney collapse from last year. Pearl's teams played with considerable passion, and that was great, but it sometimes came at the expense of focus and discipline, IMO.
2. We had a real halfcourt offense! It worked very well! Holy shizzle, is this the same team (oh yeah..new coach
). I ....absolutely LOATHED Bruce's halfcourt "offense" if that word is even allowed to be used. Early in his UT career, when we lacked talent, we relied on the fastbreak and three-pointer. Later on, we slowed it down and played the halfcourt game, but IMO it was a lazy, individual offense that tended to rely on individual talents. It always looked to me like 3-4 (and sometimes FIVE dammit!
) players standing around waiting for one of them to make an individual play. Sometimes there was a back door cut or good pick, but that was the exception. At times, it was PAINFUL to watch. Particularly late in the game with the score close, we would sometimes violate the shot clock! OMG, I am lucky I didn't stroke out over that. Anyway...I really liked what I saw tonight. A crisp motion offense with generally plenty of time on the clock and mostly INTELLIGENT SHOTS. A huge contrast to Pearl's so-called "offense:. I love Pearl to death and miss him but I do not miss his half-court "offense"!
3. Free throws! We were actually over 80% for the game! This is the best exhibition of FT shooting I have seen from the Vols in many years. I am sure there were some good games under Pearl, but they were BY FAR the exception. I have heard and even contributed to the talk that "these modern players don't buy into FT shots, there is not time to practice it, etc" but I am wondering if that is bull hockey. I think it can easily be COACHED, and though it's a small sample, I think based on tonight the Cuonzo definitely emphasizes this. Just think how many close games we lost under Pearl due to ATROCIOUS FT shooting. I sincerely hope that tonight was not a fluke and that those days are gone forever. No excuse for shooting FTs poorly! I guess FT shooting just was not flashy enough for Pearl.
In hort, although I still hate that we lost PEarl, I think Cuonzo is going to do just fine.
