Football. How do you feel about CBS maybe not broadcasting the Tennessee-Florida game for the first time in 16 years this fall? I have mixed emotions. When we were doing well, I loved Verne and whomever Gary Danielson's predecessor was. That Danielson's arrival roughly coincided with Urban Meyer's and Tim Tebow's time at Florida may not be fair to Danielson, but it is what it is, and what it is for me is a level of disdain of which I am almost ashamed yet all too happy to embrace anyway. And he and time have ravaged Verne, so for me, my initial thought is something along the lines of "Well, as long as we're spring cleaning, we might as well throw this out, too." How about you?
I was initially very interested in reading this article on Dave Hart from al.com, but I was too surprised and distracted by the stink of troll breath to enjoy it. Like chocolate and garlic, I enjoy both fan perspective media and objective mainstream media, but it's best if they don't pass my palate at the same time.
Yeah, cage fighting. It's later. But first:
Hoops. The rest of the world may have been surprised that the Tennessee team that had not yet won a road game beat a top 10 team riding a 19-game home winning streak, but Cuonzo Martin wasn't surprised, and in fact, he told the team before the game that Saturday was "the first time we're really ready to win a road game." The players just had that certain something that they'd been missing up until then:
When players walk with a certain type of swagger, a level of confidence — not cockiness, not arrogance — they can play, and they can compete.
Martin also said that the win was the first that the team had won on both ends. It also had some side benefits, the best of which was that it impressed Vol signee Derek Reese and the least of which is that it allowed Mike Strange to finish his work before he got off the plane just by apparently transcribing his taped conversations with fans in the airport. Another bonus is that it elicited this gem from Jarnell Stokes about his flagrant foul:
Basketball is a competitive game, and I wasn't going to let him score. But he's a big guy, and I'm surprised he fell like that.
Heh. Yet Life with Cuonzo means the celebration is short-lived (if not non-existent), and the team is already focusing on building the momentum Wednesday.
Rocky Top Talk readers, here's a reminder of your chance to help choose the new voice of sports in social media.
You'll recall that XFINITY is looking for the next renowned sports social media star through its Ultimate Sports Social Media Job contest. The winning candidate will serve as the new voice of XFINITY in the sports social media space and go behind-the-scenes at some of the biggest sporting events in 2012, sharing exclusive insights and updates with fans.
From February 9-19, you can review qualified entry videos and vote for the contestant you'd like to see advance to the finals of the XFINITY Ultimate Sports Social Media Job contest. The five entrants with the most votes will advance to the final round of the contest where they will cover one of five premier sporting events the weekend of March 8-11. Fans can head today to Facebook.com/XFINITY and click on the Ultimate Sports Social Media Job contest tab to vote for your favorite personality (once per day).
So who do you want to see? Vote today at Facebook.com/XFINITY.
First, Hoops. The part of the Red Hot Role Player last night was shared by Kenny (not sure what the screws thing is about) Hall and Skystache McStacheBee, who LIT UP SC for a career high 18 points. Congrats, too, to Cam Tatum for hitting the 1,000 point threshold. Jarnell Stokes didn't play due to a wrist injury suffered in a tough practice and is day-to-day, but Mike Griffith still thinks he's UT's brightest new star due more to the head on his shoulders than the size of his shoes. He's right and all, but the whole wrist thing sort of threw a timing kink into that story, didn't it, Mike?
Football. Yowza, a giant mound of football news hatched out of nowhere this morning. The coaching staff has been locked in a room to foster staff chemistry, and the meetings have produced some great information. As always, coach Chaney serves as the class clown:
Chaney said it's pointless to make it a cool contest; the Volunteers' affable offensive coordinator insisted, capriciously, that such an endeavor would be a battle for second place.
Ba dump bump. And there's this, regarding Darin Hinshaw's move from QB coach to WR coach, leaving QBs with Chaney:
The relationship Hinshaw has built with starting quarterback Tyler Bray and backups Justin Worley and Nathan Peterman, both of whom he had a major hand with their respective recruitments, won't go to waste. Chaney joked that every time Bray throws an interception, "it will be Hinshaw's fault."
The man is jovial, and I love him for it.
Sal Sunseri couldn't exactly be characterized as jovial. More . . . driven?
"I'm going to say this when you guys are watching us, you ain't going to always see us in a 3-4. You ain't always going to see us in a 4-3. You are going to see multiplicity of fronts. It's harder to run the freaking ball on a multiplicity of fronts than it is the same front."
Sunseri's preference is to play a 3-4 scheme because of the match-up it presents.
"I like getting one-on-ones and making guys block one-on-one," Sunseri explained. "If you come out with great technique and know what you are doing, it's a one-on-one battle and we should be able to whip that guy's butt."
Sunseri don't play, and he will have our guys running into brick walls thinking they can leave football player sized- and shaped- holes in them. Luckily, Chaney will be there to tease them while they're recuperating.
Lo, the mother of all daily YouTube dumps, including UT catcher Ethan Bennett playing Rocky Top on the banjo, in easy playlist form, after the jump. Hover over the player and click the rectangle thingy to bring up a list of all of the videos in the playlist so you can pick and choose. But hey, if you have 2:14:25, have at it.
Hoops. Nobody on this Tennessee team has ever lost to South Carolina, and they don't plan to do so tonight. Hopefully, the crowd, which ranks 5th in the nation in showing up for games (or, for the more cynical, 5th in the nation in conspiratorial turnstyles), will continue to do their part. Tennessee is 10-3 at home this season and has won 8 of its last 9 in Knoxville. Jeronne Maymon, Mike Griffith's mid-season MVP, may have a little to do with the outcome tonight as well. Perhaps Cameron Tatum, too, who is only six points away from 1,000 for his career. As we said yesterday, there's a lot on the line tonight against the Gamecocks, and not getting it done would be quite disappointing. So let's everybody show up, aight?
Recruiting. LB Kenneth Bynum and his parents enjoyed their visit to Rocky Top this week, and Bynum hopes to make a decision by Thursday. And yes, he caught the positive vibe he was looking for, even on a Monday/Tuesday on a college campus. However, said vibe was reportedly hot sauce-free, because, as we know, hot sauce has no nutritional value. (Yeah, don't skip that last link.)
Extras after the jump.
We're halfway through the SEC basketball season, and Mike Griffith, using a fairly generous curve, gives Tennessee a mid-term grade of B-. Mostly, the components are made up of a bunch of C+s, but the team gets a great deal of extra credit for intangibles.
Much of the positive intangibles vibe, to me anyway, comes from a certain tenuous optimism about the remainder of the season. Coach Martin seems to be successfully selling his defense-first system to his players, and he seems to be pulling the right strings and pushing the right buttons, although I call liar liar pants on fire on his claim that he wasn't sending a message to Trae Golden by removing him from the starting lineup. It's an I'm-not-saying-I'm-just-saying kind of deal, and Golden wasn't the only one to get the non-message. By the way, it's sounding like Golden's quick and positive response is going to earn him his starting gig back tomorrow night.
So we're trending in the right direction with an easier schedule on the horizon. VolQuest notes that the rest of the schedule is 50/50 home and away and that to finish 8-8 the team will have to win at home against South Carolina, Ole Miss, Arkansas, and Vanderbilt, but also find some way to win one on the road against Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, and LSU. Looks like it might come down to the wire, with a ton of teams bunched up and jockeying for seeding the rest of the way. Fun.
A few extra Talking Points tidbits after the jump.
I plan on writing more on tennis at a later date, where I will tell you all about Freshmen Brandon Fickey -- and other new additions to the team -- and his reputation for on-court McEnroe-esque outbursts, among other not-negative attributes. It appears that Mr. Fickey is doing his best to live up to his reputation. Some of you may be outraged by his behavior. And Coach Winterbotham is certainly not pleased. But I actually find it humorous. You see this in tennis all the time. For one of fourteen trillion possible examples, here is Marcos Baghdatis -- one of my favorite players, actually -- taking his frustration out on his racquets two weeks ago at the Australian Open. If you're reading this sentence and you haven't clicked on the link in the previous sentence, I think you should go back and do that. It will be worth one minute and seven seconds of your time. It is pretty funny.
After the jump, check out videos featuring Cuonzo Martin, Kenny Hall, Jerrone Maymon, Georgia highlight, and tennis highlights that unfortunately do not include temper tantrum footage.
Dooley wasn't too pleased with the late "de-commitments" of two key linebackers in this year's class, but neither was he surprised:
But from the beginning, even back in September, we knew those two guys ... it was going to be a tough road to close them out because they were both far away and never shut it down.
They were always going to listen to other schools and go on trips. When that's happening, experience tells you that you're not going to get them at the end. What made it challenging for us was, because of the 25 rule, you couldn't stockpile more at that position, knowing you were going to lose them or [that] there's a chance you're going to lose them.
And yeah, the 25 rule essentially precludes programs from buying Decommitment/Academic Ineligibility Insurance. The next best thing, then, is post-NSD scavenging and table-turning, which Dooley will be doing with Cincinnati LB commit Kenneth Bynum. (Bret Bielema does not approve and is outraged at your audacity, sir.) Bynum is taking an official visit today, and he'll be looking for that "vibe," so set your behavior to Resonate, campus residents.
Dooley's also not particularly a fan of multi-year scholarships but suggests that maybe he's just too dumb to understand contracts. Heh.
Oh, and also not a fan of the Kentucky loss, which will "bother [him] for the rest of his life." The whole "we needed that" thing is just lemonade, and hey, if it clued him in to the fact that they need more team camaraderie and leadership, then that's cool. And if it leads to a when I was your age (video) moment during which Dooley reveals that he "used to grind out Super Mario Bros. against my teammates," all the better. Who do you suppose is Dooley's favorite Super Mario character?
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