Panic Meter: What To Make Of Tennessee After Loss To Missouri

Tennessee goes down at the buzzer for the second straight game, and it might be a sign that the worst heartbreak is still to come.

After a wild comeback where Tennessee went on a 22-5 second-half run, the Vols couldn't close out a game in the final stretch. Santiago Vescovi missed a crucial free throw for the second straight game, and the opposing team hit a shot at the buzzer. Losing these two games, however, felt like more than just end-of-game magic. The Vols let two inferior teams not just hang around but, in Missouri's case, grasp control of the game. The question now has to be asked: Is it time to hit the panic button on the Tennessee Volunteers?

The simple way of putting it is that, yes, it is time to panic. There's one specific reason for answering that question, though. Everyone knew that Tennessee's three-point shooting defense was due for regression. Opponents wouldn't shoot under 25% on open threes forever, and Vanderbilt and Missouri proved that. If Tennessee doesn't have the greatest three-point shooting defense of all time and they just have a great three-point shooting defense, how good are they?

Now, let's take a step back. Tennessee is still a very good basketball team. A two-game stretch of teams shooting the ball way above what opponents had been averaging does not make Tennessee's defense bad, average, or even just good. The Vols still have a borderline top-10 two-point defense, and their three-point defense is still number one by a pretty wide margin. The team is simply experiencing a process called regression to the mean.

As I said, Tennessee's regression doesn't mean they will end up being average defensively, but every team's average or mean is different. Tennessee's perimeter defense is simply getting to a point where how their average is sustainable. Once that is established, the evaluation becomes: What can Tennessee do, and how far can they go with this version of their defense?

The bad part of all this is that now that Tennessee's defense has started regressing to the mean, we don't know how long it will last. What we do know is that there is somewhat of a precedent. Over the last decade of basketball, only two teams have finished the season with an offense ranked lower than 52nd in AdjOE (Tennessee's current rank) and gone to the Final Four: 2017 South Carolina and 2018 Loyola-Chicago. Both teams were seeded low and were ranked 24th and 31st in KenPom, respectively, to finish the season.

A Final Four might not be considered the only thing that would be satisfactory regarding a final tournament result. Still, Tennessee had a case to be the number-one team in the country just a couple of weeks ago. Measuring them to this high of a bar isn't unfair. While Tennessee could end up being an outlier, the trends would tell you there's more of a reason to panic.

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