But knowing Bill, it’s there somewhere. I don’t know how he comes up with the score, but I have all kinds of red flags about being able to draw singular conclusions. He wants to relate his scores to experience (i.e. that inexperienced teams have their best games against the worst teams). But there are other factors, too. An experienced team may have their best games against worst teams, but may not have the mental makeup to play well against good teams despite being experienced. (See Vols, Lady for a cross-sport example.)

Tennessee pegs the needle because against bad teams, the latent talent level of Tennessee is sufficient to overwhelm, so the games turn out very well. Against equally-talented teams, the coaching transience causes them to falter. It happens even in years when Tennessee had a lot of experience, which is partly why I worry that Bill is too quick to seek conclusions.

My other concern: what constitutes “best games”? Against a top-5 team, a win of any kind is a great game. Against a bottom-5 team, a win of 14 points isn’t much to write home about. That’s why he really needs to provide methodology citations.

TL;DR version:

Tennessee out-talents bad teams, but hasn’t had the coaching consistency to hold up against good teams. This we already knew.

…I had kind of intended to do that all along but got sidetracked. I use the opponent-adjusted numbers to figure out which teams tend to play their best games (from an opponent-adjusted perspective) against the best teams on the schedule, and which play their best against worst. It isn’t really a look at quality so much as personality. And the goal here isn’t so much conclusions as insight.