On Monday night, Tennessee shot 12-30 (40%) from 3 in their season opener against Tennessee Tech. That was without Santiago Vescovi, who was their best shooter last season, hitting a single 3. As a team last season, Tennessee shot 32.9% from 3 which was good enough for 231st in the country. However, what Tennessee didn't do from behind the arc on the offensive end, they certainly made up for on the defensive end by being the best 3-point defense in the country.
After adding Dalton Knecht and Jordan Gainey in the transfer portal, Tennessee has without a doubt become a better 3-point shooting team, but is it possible that 3-pointers on both ends define the season Tennessee has and the ceiling their team can reach?
Obviously, the sample size is small, and last season Tennessee shot a lot of threes compared to how good they were at shooting them, but the early results are encouraging. Last season, Tennessee shot 23.3 threes per game. That was 75th percentile in college basketball. This season, with Knecht and Gainey coming in as well as Freshman Cam Carr, they beat the number not just in the opener against Tennessee Tech, but in both exhibition games.
More specifically, Tennessee was bad last season on corner threes. They were 7th percentile in FGA% on corner 3's and 40th percentile in FG% on corner 3's. However, Tennessee hit 55% of their corner threes against Tennessee Tech (5/9) which is a lot better than the 35% that they hit last season. Obviously 55% is not sustainable, but last season Knecht hit 30.8% of his corner threes and Gainey hit 33.3% of his so it'll be interesting to see if hitting a higher percentage of corner threes is attainable.
On defense, Tennessee's 3-point defense looked on par with last season. Tennessee Tech was 2-12 from 3 on Monday night and it was actually notable that the Golden Eagles only got up 12 considering last season Tennessee was 317th defensively in 3PA/FGA ratio. Obviously, Julian Phillips was an incredible defender and was the top-rated defender in the country last season by defensive Bayesian performance rating so that's something to watch out for, but losing his defensive impact isn't probably something that pops up against Tennessee Tech.
Overall, Tennessee's ceiling, floor, expectations and season result could hinge on how they shoot and defend the three. We will be able to grasp this more once we get more data against competition that is closer to the Vols' level, but from the two exhibitions and the game against Tennessee Tech, the team is doing its best to prove that their ceiling is higher than last season.
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