ESPN’s UT coverage pathetic

UT played an exciting basketball game on Saturday, but ESPN’s coverage of it was woeful. My exasperation with ESPN lies in its insistence on style over substance, which, unfortunately, is a major shortcoming of many media outlets today. Several aspects of the game (some subtle, some obvious) should have been dealt with more critically by the network’s commentators.

For instance, Tennessee came out and made plays, hustled, played great defense and proved it was the better team. But as it was happening, and even afterward, the announcers and commentators acted like everyone should be surprised by the final result.

Chris Lofton was defended very well by Memphis throughout the game. He shot 0-for-4 from 3-point range, and he finished with seven points. By ESPN’s calculation, this should have meant the death of the Volunteers. Every one of the commentators knew that Lofton lit up Memphis for 34 points in last year’s game, and they thought that if Tennessee was going to have a chance, then he probably needed to do it again; hence the genuine surprise on the part of the analysts when the win went to UT instead of Memphis.

That was ESPN’s mistake, and they probably made it because taking a look at last year’s game was about all the research that they did. Anyone who follows UT basketball knows that this year’s team is much deeper than it has been in recent years. It’s a group of players that score in a variety of ways, and they aren’t dependent on any single player to score for them to win games.

In fact, you really don’t even have to follow Tennessee closely to know that. In the early part of this season, Lofton had a stretch of 17 pretty quiet games. Before this year’s Kentucky game, he was only averaging 13.4 points a game, down more than seven points from his average last year. What was Tennessee’s record during that period? I’m so glad you asked; it was 16-1. In other words, it’s fairly obvious that this particular team doesn’t need Lofton to be shooting the lights out for it to win (although him doing so certainly doesn’t hurt).

Every UT fan knows that fact, and ESPN should have known it as well, because covering sports is their job. Instead, the announcers continued to talk about what a mild game Lofton was having and how surprising it was that Tennessee was still in the game. What they missed was the fact that Tennessee was turning in a remarkable group effort that seemed to flummox Memphis and its sore-loser coach, John Calipari.

It was Calipari that especially frustrated me, because he got away with saying a lot of stuff that should have been repudiated by the media, but wasn’t. Here were Calipari’s post-game thoughts: “They made plays and we didn’t, which is really unusual for us. We hold them to 37 percent from the floor and lose? Never heard of such a thing. … We got out-scrapped.”

It’s unusual for Memphis’ opponents to make plays? I may have a clue as to why: Memphis plays in Conference USA. And it may console Calipari to know that his team held the Vols to 37 percent, but it did that while Tennessee was holding them to only 39 percent from the field. In fact, if you take away Derrick Rose, who had a phenomenal game, the rest of the Tigers only managed to shoot 33 percent from the field. It isn’t so much that Memphis “didn’t make plays” as it was that UT actively prevented Memphis from making plays with defense the likes of which the Tigers aren’t used to seeing in their conference.

And then Calipari repeatedly said that his team got “out-scrapped” by Tennessee. That’s loser talk. Whenever a coach calls another team scrappy, it’s a euphemism for “less talented.” Calipari was implying that his team had an off night and lost a game to a team with less talent.

I have a more logical theory: Calipari got out-coached. At least two facts support this theory. First, by his own admission, Calipari needed more timeouts at the end of the game, but he had already used them. Coach Pearl used his timeouts adroitly. Specifically, he called one before J.P. Prince’s free throws that put UT ahead and he made sure to tell his team to foul Memphis after the make to prevent the game-tying three. The plan worked to perfection.

Second, the Tigers, the taller team, were out-rebounded in the game, 34-50. Good rebounding is the hallmark of a smart team, because smart teams realize that positioning and timing are the keys to rebounding, not height. As John Wooden said, “It’s not about how high you jump. It’s about where you are and when you jump.”

The media should have highlighted some of these inconsistencies during their extensive commentary following the game, but they didn’t. And that’s where they failed last weekend. Luckily, their job this week was much simpler: Voting UT No. 1 in the country.

— Tim Weatherall is a senior in mathematics. He can be reached at weather@utk.edu.