ESPN Men's Basketball

For the next month or so, our friends at The Mag are previewing one high-profile school per day for their Summer Buzz series. For the sake of all that is synergistic, yours truly will be attempting the same, complementing each comprehensive Insider preview with some adjusted efficiency fun. Today's subject? Florida. Up next? UCLA.

The 2010-11 Florida Gators are an interesting proposition.

In many ways, this is the same team that had an improved 2009-10 season. Last year's Gators were better than recent incarnations, and their season culminated with the program's first appearance in the NCAA tournament since the Joakim Noah-led glory years.

But that improvement, while real, was merely marginal. The Gators were a bubble team for most of the season, and they weren't especially impressive on either side of the ball. Florida ranked No. 32 in adjusted offensive efficiency (112.6 points per 100 possessions) and No. 67 in adjusted defensive efficiency (94.9 allowed).

Nor were the Gators at all deep. Four players -- Erving Walker, Kenny Boynton, Chandler Parsons, and Alex Tyus -- played more than 70 percent of the Gators' available minutes last season, and all four used more than 21 percent of their team's possessions. All four are back in 2010-11.

In other words, if you're trying to project the 2010-11 Florida Gators' season, you'd do well to start in 2009-10. This year's Gators are going to look a lot like last year's.

That doesn't mean fans should necessarily expect the same season, however. For one, Boynton is taking the freshman-to-sophomore leap that can oftentimes yield a player's greatest stretch of improvement. Boynton is a skilled scorer who can get his shot against anybody; if his jumper becomes more efficient, he could have a big-time sophomore season.

It's also worth noting that, you know, sometimes veteran cores with years of experience playing together just ... get better. It's much harder to quantify than pace or adjusted efficiency, of course. But it is something.

Also, Chandler Parsons is (somehow) getting taller. So there's that, too.

More than anything, though, the Gators' chances of improving will rest largely on the contributions they get from yet another talented Billy Donovan recruiting class -- on the defensive end, specifically. The Gators will welcome 6-foot-9 forward Patric Young, the No. 13-ranked player in the 2010 class, as well as the No. 35-ranked Casey Prather, a 6-foot-6 small forward. ESPNU's recruiting analysts have raved about both players' defensive abilities, calling Young "the best all-around post defender" in the 2010 class. Prather, meanwhile, is "one of the top on-ball defenders in this class nationally."

That qualifies as very good news for the Gators. Florida was efficient enough on offense last season, but it was merely mediocre on defense. In fact, were it not for a very impressive ability to keep its opponents away from the free throw line -- Florida was the No. 13-ranked team in opponents' free throw rate -- the Gators would have been downright bad.

Adding two players of Young and Prather's skills -- especially Prather, who can add defensive skill and depth to Florida's backcourt in one fell swoop -- is exactly what the Gators need.

If those recruits can blend into what is already a well-defined Florida core, and that core improves as it should, Florida could have its first legitimate postseason run since the title years. Last year was nice, but the 2010-11 Gators -- much the same, but, as Florida fans will hope, a little different, too -- ought to be worth the watch.

For the next month or so, our friends at The Mag are previewing one high-profile school per day for their Summer Buzz series. For the sake of all that is synergistic, yours truly will be attempting the same, complementing each comprehensive Insider preview with some adjusted efficiency fun. Today's subject? Tennessee. Up next? Florida.

(Oh, and sorry for the late start this morning, folks. Yours truly caught a bad batch of something yesterday. Let's not get into detail.)

Remember when Tennessee was supposed to go away?

Tyler Smith was booted from the team. Melvin Goins, Brian Williams and Cameron Tatum were suspended, perhaps indefinitely. The Volunteers had hit that terrible midseason obstacle -- losing your best player -- from which most teams never recover. After New Year's Day, Tennessee was supposed to fade.

Yeah, that didn't happen. Instead, the Vols responded to the Jan. 1 Smith incident with a thrilling home upset against No. 1 Kansas on Jan. 10, handing the Jayhawks one of just three losses all season. Even then, though, it was hard to see how this Tennessee team -- without its best scorer and most important interior player -- was going to do much more than merely hang around for the rest of the college basketball season.

Well, UT did more than just hang around. It stayed in the thick of things until March, when, after beating the No. 2-seeded, Evan Turner-equipped Ohio State Buckeyes, it was just a handful of possessions away from taking Michigan State's spot in the Final Four in Indianapolis.

And how did Tennessee do it? Defense.

This isn't much of a mystery, but any discussion of the Volunteers from 2009-10 -- and how the 2010-11 version will live up -- starts and ends with defensive ability. Tennessee allowed 88.5 adjusted points per 100 possessions last season, which gave it the 11th-best defense in the country. By contrast, the Vols' offense was anemic: 108.9 points per 100 possessions wasn't even top-50 in the country. But it was more than enough to break away from opponents who flailed about when Tennessee put the defensive pressure on.

There is reason to believe the Vols won't be able to rely so heavily on their defensive chops in 2010-11. For one, there's Bruce Pearl's statistical history: 2009-10 was the best defensive team of Pearl's Tennessee career by a long shot. With the exception of that loaded 2007-08 team, which was ranked No. 22 in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency, the Volunteers have always been far more proficient on the offensive end.

There's also the loss of Tennessee's two best defensive players, J.P. Prince and Wayne Chism. Prince was the steal artist and lockdown perimeter defender, swiping 3.5 percent of his opponents' possessions and creating havoc for guards with his 6-foot-7 size. (The Sweet 16 game was one of the few times all season that Evan Turner looked like he met his match. Naturally, his line was still insane.)

Chism manned the paint. Without Smith, the Volunteers didn't have many bigs to fall back on, so Chism's performance as a defender -- leading his team in block percentage (5.7) while guarding each opponent's best big man and grabbing plenty of rebounds, too (21.5 defensive rebounding percentage) -- was a major reason why they could afford to keep so many combo-guard-forward types on the floor at one time.

Without those two players, the Vols will miss a little bit of offense. They'll miss a lot of defense.

You've already heard the good news, though. Pearl's teams don't need to be the best defensive team in the country. Last year's transformation was more from necessity than desire. The Volunteers have always thrived on offense. Which means the return of Scotty Hopson, a sophomore whose tempo-free offensive numbers (his offensive rating was a mere 96.6 last year, which isn't very good) belie his incredible talent. Hopson has had an impressive summer. He'll need to carry it into the season.

It will also be interesting to see what kind of contribution ESPNU 2010 No. 6 overall prospect Tobias Harris can make. His high school numbers are enticingly gaudy. A quick rundown from today's Buzz: "Here's what Harris managed in his final two seasons as the top prep product in the state of New York: Mr. Basketball and Gatorade Player of the Year honors as a senior after averaging 25 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks, leading Half Hollow Hills West (Dix Hills, N.Y.) to the Class AA state championship game. As a junior, he averaged 25 points and 12 rebounds, leading Long Island Lutheran to a Class A state title."

I think it's safe to say Harris has offensive talent.

Throw in a couple of other athletic recruits -- Jordan McRae and Trae Golden -- as well as Brian Williams, who impressed in Tennessee's tournament run, and it's not hard to see the Vols reverting back to their high-flying offensive ways in short order.

Of course, it's always hard to predict what recruits will add or detract from a team's performance. Whatever the new batch of Volunteers does, though, it is easy to predict that Pearl will coach them very well. Last season was a testament to Pearl's tenure in Knoxville thus far. It showcased his ability to motivate players in the face of adversity, his willingness to change his tactics, and his unique tournament savvy.

Whether the Vols go back to their offensive ways or find a way to remain one of the country's best defensive teams -- or, hey, maybe both -- you can bet it will be by design.

For the next month or so, our friends at The Mag are previewing one high-profile school per day for their Summer Buzz series. For the sake of all that is synergistic, yours truly will be attempting the same, complementing each comprehensive Insider preview with some adjusted efficiency fun. Today's subject: Kentucky . Up next? Louisville.

Tuesday, I spent much of the Duke post using the word "change." At the risk of getting repetitive ... ladies and gentleman, your 2010-11 Kentucky Wildcats!

John Wall is gone. DeMarcus Cousins is gone. Patrick Patterson, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton are all gone. Each was taken in the first round of this summer's NBA draft. And that's exactly how John Calipari likes it.

Either by design or by accident, Calipari is forging a new talent strategy at Kentucky. That strategy doesn't mind recruiting one-and-done players. In fact, it actively encourages it.

The difficult part of this strategy is knowing just how good Kentucky is going to be. The 2009-10 Cats were easier. Wall was always going to be a force and Patterson was a star under former coach Billy Gillispie. Bledsoe had the combo-guard skills to start alongside Wall; Cousins was, at the very least, going to rebound. (He ended up doing much more than that.)

The 2010-11 team is much more difficult to predict. Can new point guard Brandon Knight lead as intuitively and seamlessly as Wall? Will Enes Kanter replace the rebounding and interior defense of Cousins? (Related question: Can Kanter get eligible in time for it to matter?) Can new guards Doron Lamb and Stacey Poole give Kentucky some measure of outside shooting? Is Terrence Jones, the most indecisive UK commitment of all-time, good enough to replicate Patterson?

All of that seems doubtful, which is why the Wildcats aren't likely to be as dominant in the SEC as they were in Calipari's first season on the job. There is reason to think this team can be awfully good, though, and the reason is Calipari.

Coach Cal is often maligned as a master recruiter who lacks the X's and O's ability of his successful contemporaries. There might be some truth to that. (The decision not to foul in the 2008 Kansas-Memphis title game might haunt him the rest of his life.) But since the coach hit his elite-level stride at Memphis in 2005-06, Calipari's teams have always been good at two things: Chemistry and team defense.

The former alleviates concerns about mixing in new talent. It also points to a simple fact that some Calipari haters oftentimes forget: The dribble-drive offense. His system works because it reduces responsibility and makes the game simple. In 2009-10, the style of the Cats dictated a slower tempo, but Kentucky's new blood will be running again in 2010-11. Freshmen might take a while to learn college hoops, but it doesn't get much easier than learning it Cal's way.

The latter in that equation -- team defense -- is where Calipari's teams are always underappreciated. Take a look at the defensive efficiency of his last five teams (stats, as always, courtesy of Ken Pomeroy):

• 2005-06 Memphis Tigers: 87.4 points per 100 possessions. Ranked No. 6 in the country.
• 2006-07 Memphis Tigers: 86.9 points per 100. Ranked No. 11.
• 2007-08 Memphis Tigers: 83.9 points per 100. Ranked No. 4.
• 2008-09 Memphis Tigers: 82.5 points per 100. Ranked No. 1.
• 2009-10 Kentucky Wildcats: 86.3 points per 100. Ranked No. 6.

You get the idea. Calipari's teams can play defense. So can a lot of other teams, right? So what?

The reason why this is so important for Kentucky is because of Calipari's recruiting style. All of the teams mentioned above featured a bevy of young players. A portion of those players were elite one-and-done talents.

Coaches often complain that AAU and high school basketball is so easy for the best players in the country that they learn bad habits, and those bad habits manifest themselves in poor team defense. "Everybody knows how to score, but not everybody knows how to play basketball." How often do you hear college coaches say that?

Not Calipari. He manages to take the best talent in the country and unleash it on the college hoops world, but he doesn't just do so by playing to that talent's desire for stardom or scoring or high-flying alley-oops. It's easy to picture teams with so much young talent lapsing into lazy summer league defense. Instead, Calipari makes them buy in. On both ends. The result is teams that combine those dribble-drive-created offensive flurries with stifling, harassing team defense. It's just what Calipari teams do. There's no reason to expect the 2010-11 Cats to be any different.

There was simply too much turnover in Lexington this summer to know much about the 2010-11 Wildcats. We don't know how they'll respond to adversity. We don't know whether Brandon Knight can be John Wall. We don't know if they'll rebound, especially now that Cousins isn't hoovering everything in sight on the offensive end. We don't know whether this is an Elite Eight team or a No. 6 seed. We don't know how good they'll really be.

What we do know is that Kentucky will play incredibly efficient defense. We'll see if the rest, as it so often has for Calipari, can take care of itself.