There were a couple of competing narratives about Saturdays game that had me curious about how Tennessee attacked Michigan and how Michigan responded.

1) One was how much blame for the loss was on Rick Barnes. He got a lot of knee-jerk blame for "Rick Barnes-ing" this one, but as Tennessee blogger "Will" (linked shared in Brians gamer - a good read) and some others pointed out, he's not shooting threes and going 2/18.  Sometimes you're just unlucky is the counter point.

2) The second was whether the guards were responsible for much of Kennedy Chandler / Tennessee guard scoring (which was the assertion here) or whether it was mostly on Hunter as Sam Vecenie at the Athletic asserted here.

TL;DR before I get into the analysis:

1) I thought Tennessee played way too many two big lineups that limited Kennedy and the Tennessee guards.  Yes, they still could have won had they made their threes (which were mostly set up in their small ball lineups), but their rotations decreased their chances IMO.

2) Hunter was the primary victim of Kennedy's work, but I thought his midrange jumpers were shots Michigan wanted, he just made a lot of them.  The guards weren't bad, IMO, with Jones being much better than expected.  Oddly, they didn't play Frankie on Kennedy much.  It was either Jones or Brooks.

So here we go.  Tennessee started the game, as they always do with two bigs:

#2 Brandon Huntley-Hatfield is one of those guys that starts and doesn't play even close to half his teams minutes so you kind wonder why you'd start him at all.  But thank you, Rick Barnes!

#33 Plavsic is the 7 footer that played more than normal in this game, likely because he'd be able to defend Dickinson in the post better than Fulkerson.

And as Matt EM has explained about Michigan playing two bigs, when you run pick and roll with two bigs in the game, you're mostly just setting up post plays because the paint is clogged.  This is how Tennessee pick and rolls mostly looked when two bigs were in the game.  Notice how Diabate is in easy help position without even needed to rotate or leave a shooter:

Since Moussa is there waiting, Chandler just probes instead of attacking (he could easily go by Hunter but you'll see why he doesn't want to attack Moussa later):

Moussa is also in good position to help on a roll so there's really not much here and Jones recovers:

On this one they tried to run double screen action to open up the paint:

But Jones does a really good job of beating him tot he spot and forcing a long two (which Chandler missed):

Here's another one with Moussa's man clogging up middle so it makes driving and rolling difficult:

So instead of going vertical to the basket, Chandler slowly goes horizontal, only looking for the roll but Moussa is there for help and Jones and Hunter recover:

Later in the possession they rescreened but again, Hunter is dropping deep and Moussa's guy is right under the basket, making a drive past Hunter pointless anyway (which means Hunter should probably be playing up a bit more to prevent the pull up since he has help behind him):

But Jones makes a great recovery here to block (!!!) it from behind:

Many of their early possessions just ended in Josiah Jordan-James (Jingleheimer Schmidt / JJJ) or others taking pull ups or turn around fade away jumpers. Just really bad offense considering what their strengths are and what Michigan's weaknesses are.  The fact they put a guy down low to let Moussa stand around and protect the rim was crazy.

Luckily for them JJJ hit his first three fade aways, and they got Michigan on some lazy turnovers that went for layups the other way, but again, that's the only way they got to 24 points in the first 15 minutes.  By playing two bigs, they almost totally neutralized their biggest weapon in Kennedy Chandler.

FTR, Chandler did beat Jones on one drive and dump off to Fulkerson but that was the only work he did on drives during the first 15 minutes.

Then with Michigan up 30-24, Barnes want small for the last 5 minutes of the half with three guards, a wing and just one big.  You know they then went on a 13-2 run to close the half but this is how they did it:

Welp, looks like my drive is full so I can't upload any more photos and it appears the new site doesn't support Flickr embeds?

If anyone comments on how to delete a past diary, I can pick this up in another one.  I can't delete the photos in my drive because it says they're being used (i.e. in other diaries).