Cats #2 Ranked Defense in SEC

UKBB4Ever

All-Conference
Jul 3, 2025
1,708
2,971
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It’s points. More a reflection of stall ball than guarding. That’s why Ole Miss is up there.

Tubby was always up there on scoring defense because of his stalling on offense.
 
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Anony Moose

Senior
Dec 2, 2025
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Ehh, we've played 1 okay team in Bama. The rest have sucked so far and we squeaked out wins in all but one of those.

Let me know where we ranked after playing the stronger teams.
 
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gbl97

All-American
Mar 12, 2002
3,523
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Interesting that in defensive efficiency, only UT is top 25 in the country (#24). That would indicate basically no title contenders in the SEC at this point.
 

rivercatinfl

All-Conference
Nov 21, 2012
1,964
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We better bring our "A" game to Vandy. They are favored by 6.5 currently. Our defense will need to show up early and often.
 

Goingfor9

All-Conference
Jan 27, 2003
16,020
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We stink all the way around. 11 years no ffs. I don’t know how this can be stood for. It’s all on Barney. He doesn’t care enough about bb to put work in. He’s on cruise control like cal and stoops with their awful contracts. Look at the message forums all combined into one. That’s the barney effect. We need an AD to come in a(Kentuckian we can trust) and prioritize fixing the basketball program. We need to be in the thick of it every year for a title. No nits definitely never again a losing season. This year there will be a lot of coaches available but if Barney is doing it he will go back to Drew again.


I know our defense is decent but it’s a top 40 defense. Good enough to possibly get us a 7 seed in the tourney. That’s what ticks me off. The conversation should be about what we need to do to win both games this week and our” defense is the tool we will use to smother bc it dominates”. I the reality. We look like a 7 seed and not missing the tourney because of our defense
 
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UKSanders

Senior
Aug 27, 2007
276
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Defense is more than just PPG.

It’s points. More a reflection of stall ball than guarding. That’s why Ole Miss is up there.

Tubby was always up there on scoring defense because of his stalling on offense.


I was thinking that, too, b/c the statistic was PPG allowed, and as you were stating, that has a lot to do with tempo.

However, I was surprised to see the Cats are also 2nd in FG% defense at 41.4% (TN is 1st at 39.4%), and they are 4th in 3pt FG% at 30.2% (#1 is Vandy at 28.9%).

The stats overall are probably a fairly reliable indicator b/c in the 7 SEC games, the Cats have already played the 3 worst FG% shooting teams in the SEC (Bama 45.7, Ole Miss 44.0, MSU 44.0) AND 4 of the top 6 (MIZZOU 50.2%, LSU 49.0, Tex 49.0, TN 48.1).

So, that gives me some hope that this could be a decent defensive team.
 
May 27, 2007
31,885
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We are giving up 1.10 ppp. That's a much better way of looking at it.

That is 3rd in the SEC.

Of course, not everyone is playing balanced schedules so that plays into this a bit. But yeah.

Conversely we are only scoring 1.15. That's 8th.

Clearly the defense has been better than the offense.
 
May 27, 2007
31,885
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Honestly you want to know how a team is doing in conference, just look at points per possession on offense and defense and take the difference. That is your efficiency margin and the higher that number, the better.
 
May 27, 2007
31,885
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What I always like doing is looking after games how that compares to other teams.

For example, it's one thing to say that UK scored 80 points on UT defense. Or to say we scored 1.26 points per possession.

But when you look at it like that was the best mark against the UT defense all season long, that to me says something.

UT has played good offenses like Texas, Alabama, Florida, Houston, Illinois and Kansas and yet we have the high mark vs them.

Obviously single games don't mean much but if you keep consistently putting up high marks against teams compared to their other opponents, that says a lot at least to me.

We also put up 1.34 on Miss St which was the best vs their defense.

So even tho our offense is lagging a bit behind the defense in SEC play, we have had some big games.

I'd say the offense is just.............inconsistent and not necessarily "bad"