PHILADELPHIA — There’s a boxing term that applies perfectly to Tennessee basketball’s first round NCAA Tournament matchup against Miami (Ohio)— styles make fights. The Vols and RedHawks play two extremely different styles of basketball.
“It’s going to be which team can come in and impose their will,” Tennessee assistant coach Amorrow Morgan told RTI Thursday. “Which team can execute over the course of 40 minutes over the period of the game. So, yes, I would say the styles are completely different. They’re going to look to shoot a lot of threes and we shoot a good percentages, but we’re going to look to ground and pound and try to punish them on the glass over the course of the game.”
Miami takes 45% of its shots from beyond the three-point line. They space the floor with shooters and have five players who have made over 30 three-point attempts this season. Tennessee takes only 31% of its shots from three-point range. Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Nate Ament are the only Vols who have made more than 30 triples this season.
The RedHawks are like Alabama in the way they want to shoot three-pointers and they want to shoot it quickly. But their offensive style is more like Kentucky with its floor spacing and off-ball movement.
Miami is difficult to defend because of the way they stretch the floor and are balanced. Six different RedHawks are averaging between 10 and 14 points per game. They share the basketball at a high clip. In its First Four win over SMU, Travis Steele’s team made 16 triples and totaled 20 assists to just four turnovers.
“They share the sugar, and they all do,” senior guard Grant Hurst told RTI. “They all shoot it. They make the right play over and over. There’s not a selfish player on their team. They’re not allowed to play selfish, it doesn’t look like. They all trust and respect each other’s games and they do a great job of finding each other.”
Tennessee, on the other hand, has battled spacing issues all season as a result of its two-big lineups. But those lineups have led to the Vols absolutely dominating on the glass. With a 45% offensive rebound rate, Tennessee is the best rebounding team in the country. They play at a slow pace and want to drag opponents into low possession games.
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Miami has the second lowest offensive rebound rate in the tournament but is pretty solid on the defensive glass. Still, the MAC Regular-Season Champions have yet to face a team that can pound the glass the way Tennessee will. The question is if Tennessee can capitalize on those second chance opportunities.
“We always do a good job offensive rebounding,” sophomore forward J.P. Estrella told RTI. “It’s just the second chance points. So we got to make sure, this game is especially, like when we get the ball, we got to do a great job of scoring because of their lack of size compared to us. So make sure we do a good job with that.”
Who dictates the terms of the game is a major key. How does Tennessee do that?
“We’re going to try to slow the game down, is what I’m guessing Coach is wanting to do,” Hurst said. “Against teams at high pace and lots of shots attempted, we try to make them do what they(‘re) not usually comfortable with. So probably do the same thing there and moving forward, we’ll try to play our game and try to control it from the tip.”
That’s something Tennessee historically does really well against high-tempo teams like Alabama and Louisville. Even in the Vols’ home loss against the Crimson Tide earlier this month, they turned it into a low possession, half court game.
To do that, Tennessee has to take care of the basketball. The Vols have struggled with turnovers all season. If they can avoid them then they’ll limit Miami’s transition opportunities while giving themselves a chance to control the paint and score on second chance opportunities.
“Big thing for us all season has been taking care of the basketball,” Morgan said. “That’s not going to change, because we want to make sure that we have more possessions. And if we have more possessions, if we get shots on those possessions that gives us a chance to be able to win the paint battle, and that’s going to be a big part of the game tomorrow. We got to try to dominate the paint.”
Tipoff between Tennessee and Miami is at 4:25 p.m. ET. Andrew Catalon, Steve Lappas and Evan Washburn are on the call for TBS.
