Murray State at Tennessee

Lots of excitement at Tennessee, as the anticipation is this will be another NCAA tournament team. Murray St. has lost plenty from last year, but this is a team that year after year matches up with some upper tier teams, and makes a respectful showing. You have to go back over three years to find a Murray St. team losing by 20 to this type of team. It is easy for us to acknowledge Tennessee is a much better team here, but a couple things at work makes us believe this will be closer than the huge spread. The first of which is Tennessee's inability to handle the ball. They are averaging 19 turnovers a game in their first seven, and five of those opponents have been Coppin St, LA Lafayette, NC-Wilm, Fordham, and Middle Tenn. They have a team assist total of 107 and a team turnover total of 131. It is amazing but 8 of the top 9 players have more turnovers than assists! That does not look like a team ready to blow someone out of the building, but a team trying to find some offensive chemistry. Secondly, they are being out-shot 44.6% for, and 45.3% against, with at least 5 of the 7 opponents inferior to them. The last factor is they have Memphis on deck, and not sure just how much energy they will put into this game, and for Murray State it is always a big game when playing an SEC school. Too many points, but we will gladly take them.