BigOrangeBasketball.comTennessee Basketball

Tennessee moved one win closer to securing its fourth NCAA tournament bid in as many seasons under Bruce Pearl with an improbable, yet impressive, win against Florida in Gainesville Sunday afternoon.

The Vols moved back into a first-place tie in the SEC East with South Carolina and can clinch at least a tie for the SEC East title with a win against South Carolina in Columbia Thursday night.

More importantly, the Vols, now 9-5 overall in conference play, are one win away from locking up an NCAA bid, no matter how they play in the SEC tournament in two weeks.

This game came down to offensive efficiency, and the Vols were just a little bit better after 40 minutes.  Against a porous Gator defense, the Vols shot 10-19 from three for the game and 52.6% from two.  The Gators, conversely, shot a very respectable 13-28 from three, but only 45.8% from two.  That was the difference.

The Vols finish the regular season at home against Alabama, and South Carolina finishes on the road at Georgia.

ESPN will televise Thursday night’s game between the Vols and Gamecocks at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

LSU was the first team in the SEC to solidfy an NCAA tournament bid last week with a win at Arkansas.  The Tigers followed up that victory with a home win against Auburn to move to 11-1 in the SEC.  LSU can clinch the SEC West title with a win against Florida Tuesday night.

The SEC-West-leading Tigers will have a hand in deciding the SEC champion this week as they play host to Florida tomorrow night and then travel to Lexington to play Kentucky on Saturday.

The SEC East continues to be a jumbled mess.  As expected, Florida got well last week with two home games and two wins.  Tennessee, conversely, lost two on the road and was blown out on both occasions.

The East is anybody’s title with four games remaining.

Here are my conference rankings for the week of 2-23-09:

1. LSU (11-1) – Will clinch SEC West by defeating Florida Tuesday night.  Already secured conference’s first NCAA tournament bid.

2. South Carolina (8-4) – Narrowly defeated Arkansas at home to stay atop SEC East.  Still without a bad loss in conference play.

3. Kentucky (8-4) – Up-and-down week for the Cats, but blowout win against Tennessee has them feeling good with two weeks to play.

4. Florida (8-4) – Big games with LSU and Tennessee this week.

5. Mississippi State (7-5) – Not world beaters, but the best of the rest right now.

6. Tennessee (7-5) – Dropped to fourth place in the East after two blowout losses on the road.

7.  Ole Miss (6-6) – Save for the Cincinnati situation, Kennedy would be conference coach of the year candidate.

8. Vanderbilt (5-7) – This team continues to mystify me.

9.  Auburn (6-6) – Could make some noise next month in SEC tournament.

10. Alabama (4-8)

11. Arkansas (1-11)

12.  Georgia (1-11)

Having watched Saturday’s apocalypse against Kentucky, I have to say I appreciated Bruce Pearl’s apology after the game…

“As a head coach, I have never been so embarrassed by how I coached or how my team played.  I apologize to our fans and the University of Tennessee,” Pearl said after the game.

“I can take losing.  I don’t take it well, but I can take it.  But I can’t take losing like we did today,” he added.

Pearl felt what most Vol fans were feeling, and he said so.

What began as an ugly game for the Vols never really got any prettier.

It was clear from the opening tip that Tennessee was not ready to play this game.  The Vols didn’t dent the scoreboard for the game’s first eight minutes and had scored only two points through the first 10.

It was an offensive performance, particularly in the first half, that would have made one of Kevin O’Neill’s teams look like an offensive juggernaut.

And defensively, while the Vols were able to make Jodie look like Meeks instead of Maravich, Kentucky shot an eye-popping 59.6% from the field as a team for the game.  The Wildcats had wide open shots wherever they wanted them.

Now 26 games into the season, I think it is safe to surmise that Tennessee is an average college basketball team in a bad league.  The Vols aren’t 7-5 and one game out in the SEC East race because they are good.

And while the Vols are still in the running for an at-large NCAA tournament bid, it’s hard to argue they are deserving of such a bid, and it’s even harder to imagine the Vols making any kind of impact in the tournament should they be selected.

What is manifesting itself as a difficult and disappointing season for Tennessee has, in actuality, been three years in the making.

While Pearl’s on-the-court coaching has been solid, he and his staff have not gotten the job done off the court, and I’m speaking primarily about recruiting.

Tennessee and Pearl have simply missed on too many guys and have had recruiting classes, save for perhaps the last one, that simply haven’t delivered SEC-quality talent.  Pearl is paying the price for this now.

With the exception of Scotty Hopson, who himself has been very inconsistent as a freshman, Tennessee does not match up personnel wise with most of its SEC brethren.

The Vols, for example, again save for Hopson, don’t have a player on the roster the caliber of Kentucky’s Jodie Meeks or Patrick Patterson.

Even Tennessee’s Tyler Smith is nowhere close to being that type of player.  Any discussions of the NBA for Smith are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, Smith is averaging 17.2 points and 5.7 rebounds per game for the season.  But if you analyze Smith’s stats in five games against four SEC teams (LSU, Kentucky, Florida and South Carolina) who arguably are potential  NCAA tournament teams, Smith is averaging 14 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, and is shooting a meager 30.5% from the field in those five games.

Smith is simply the best player on a bad team, but hardly an All-American or legitimate NBA prospect.

Even as good an on-floor coach as I think Bruce Pearl is, he’s not going to be able to fix this team this season with the current roster.

This team struggles because it’s not very good, and its personnel is not very good, compared not only to the hierarchy in the SEC, but the Top 25 as well.

This, I repeat, has been three years in the making.  It’s going to take a while to get it fixed.

The LSU Tigers assured themselves of nothing worse than an at-large bid into this year’s NCAA Tournament with a 72-69 victory at Arkansas tonight.

With the win, LSU becomes the first conference entry into the Big Dance.  Since the conference split into two divisions, no SEC team with 10 or more conference wins has ever been left out of the tournament.  The Tigers are now 10-1.

The Tigers came from 18 down in the first half to defeat the Hogs.

LSU can clinch the overall SEC regular season championship with three wins in its five remaining conference games.

Expect Kentucky’s Patrick Patterson to play Saturday against Tennessee when the two teams collide in Lexington.

In fact, it is my belief that had Kentucky’s schedule for the week been reversed and the Wildcats had played the Vols Tuesday night instead of Vanderbilt, Patterson would have played then.

I’m certain Kentucky preferred to have Patterson available for Tennessee, rather than Vanderbilt, so it held him out.

In hindsight, you could argue the strategy backfired as Kentucky lost to Vandy, but I’m sure the Wildcats preferred to have Patterson back for a team they were fighting for first in the SEC East, rather than one that was trailing them.

The 6-9, 235-pound Patterson is the SEC’s 10th leading scorer, averaging 15.1 points per game, and the fifth leading rebounder averaging eight per game.

In a game that Tennessee really needed Wednesday night in Oxford, Ole Miss manhandled the Vols, 81-65.

Tennessee’s loss, coupled with South Carolina’s loss at Mississippi State, throws the SEC East race back into a four-way tie for first with Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and Florida all with 7-4 records.

There were two glaring shortcomings of the Vols against Ole Miss.

For the second-straight game on the road, the Vols were overwhelmed in the post by yet another undersized team.  (A much smaller Auburn team outrebounded Tennessee, 34-21, a week and a half ago.)

The Rebels’ Murphy Holloway, Deuandre Cranston and Malcolm White combined for 33 points and 21 rebounds in the game, compared to Wayne Chism’s, Brian Williams’ and Emmanuel Negedu’s 22 points and 16 rebounds.  And in actuality, the rebounding discrepancy was worse than it looks on paper.  Chism picked up three or four offensive rebounds late when Ole Miss had the game well in hand.

To make matters worse, Ole Miss’ post players combined to shoot 15-18 from the field or 83.3%  against Tennessee. The Vols were pummeled in the paint. 

This game also demonstrated what a difference two scoring wing players can make.  The Rebels’ David Huertas and Terrico White combined for 37 points, four above their combined average.

Compare that with the Vols’ combined production of 22 points from Scotty Hopson, Cameron Tatum, J.P. Prince and Renaldo Woolridge, and you see what a disadvantage it is to have wing players who can’t consistently score the basketball.

Tennessee now finds itself needing to win at least one remaining road game against the likes of Kentucky, Florida or South Carolina to get to 10 wins in conference play and assure themselves of an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. 

Of the four teams tied for first in the East, Tennessee is the only one of the four that still has to play the other three all on the road.

Tennessee now travels to Kentucky Saturday for a 1:00 p.m. Eastern game to be televised by CBS.

All eyes will be on the state of Mississippi Wednesday night where two games with huge SEC East implications will take place.

South Carolina travels to Starkville to face Mississippi State, and the Vols will be in Oxford to take on Ole Miss.

Both games tip at 8:00 pm Eastern, and both will have a huge bearing on  who is eventually crowned champion in the SEC East.

Depending on what happens tonight in Nashville between Kentucky and Vanderbilt, undisputed first place in the East could be on the line Wednesday night in Mississippi. 

In a year in which bids to the NCAA tournament may be rather scarce for the SEC, the fight for first is more important than ever.

Fortunately for Vol fans, Raycom will televise the Ole Miss/Tennessee game.  The South Carolina/Mississippi State game will not be televised, but here’s hoping the Raycom producers will give us frequent updates as to the goings on in Starkville.

It will be a big night in the state of Mississippi, and a bigger night in determining the ultimate fate of the SEC East.

When Tennessee takes on Ole Miss and Kentucky this week, it will face three of the most prolific wing scorers in the conference in David Huertas and Terrico White of Ole Miss and Jodie Meeksavich of Kentucky.

If the Vols are to have any chance of winning either of these two road games, the Vols will have to be much better defensively on the perimeter.

These two games this week represent the most serious defensive challenges that Bruce Pearl has faced in his 3+ years at Tennessee. It’s clear what Tennessee must accomplish defensively to win, but can Pearl’s Vols do it?

First up is Ole Miss on Wednesday.  Huertas and White are both top 10 scorers in the league averaging 17.9 and 16.6 points per game respectively.   If both of these guys go off against the Vols, it will be a long night.  They need to hold at least one below his average to have any chance to win.  White, incidentally, is my choice right now for SEC Freshman Of the Year.  He’s quite impressive.

And then there’s Kentucky’s Meeksavich on Saturday.  We all remember his 54-point performance earlier this season in Knoxville.  Meeksavich currently leads the SEC in scoring at 26.0 ppg.

The Vols must do a better job against Meeksavich on Saturday.  They must deny him the ball all over the court, and when he does get it, they must be much more physical with him behind the arc.  The Vols need to put bigger, quicker guys on him.  Josh Tabb won’t cut it.  Cam Tatum is not physical enough.  I would rotate Scotty Hopson, Tyler Smith and even Wayne Chism on him most of the night.

If the Vols can just hold Meeksavich to his average, they have a chance to win.  Another Maravich-type performance and the Vols are doomed to defeat.

LSU continued to solidify its position last week as not only the champions of the West, but almost certainly overall SEC champions as well.

The most noteworthy event on the East side last week had to have been Georgia’s upset win over Florida, the Bulldogs’ first win in conference play and a defeat for Florida that knocked them out of a first-place tie in the East.

Lots of interesting matchups this week beginning with Vandy vs. Kentucky (Gillispie vs. Edwards) tomorrow night on ESPN and culminating with Tennessee vs. Kentucky on Saturday.

Here are my rankings for the week of 2-16-09…

1. LSU (9-1) - Tigers should move to 11-1 by week’s end.

2.  South Carolina (7-3) – Huge game at Mississippi State Wed night.

3.  Kentucky (7-3) – Plays its two Tennessee rivals this week.

4. Tennessee (7-3) – Two huge road contests this week.

5.  Florida (6-4) – Gators should be 8-4 next week after two home games this week.

6. Mississippi State (6-4) – Lost twice this past week.

7.  Vanderbilt (4-6) – Looked terrible against Tennessee on Saturday.  Can the Dores rebound against UK tomorrow night at Memorial?

8. Ole Miss (4-6) – In a big-time spoiler role now.

9. Auburn (5-5) – Nice home win against Miss State last week.

10. Alabama (3-7)

11. Arkansas (1-9) – Would you have ever believed it?

12. Georgia (1-9) – Off the schnide with win at home over Florida last Saturday.

Whether you are interested or not in the upcoming Tuesday night game between Kentucky and Vanderbilt in Nashville to be televised by ESPN at 9:00 EST, you may want to tune in at halftime.

That’s when the highly anticipated third interview of the season between Kentucky head coach Billy Gillispie and ESPN sideline reporter Jeannine Edwards is set to take place.

So far, the first two installments have been pretty interesting between the two.  Gillispie has either accused the reporter of asking dumb questions, said she knew more than he did, or better yet said he didn’t hear the question at all.

I’m sure both Gillispie and Edwards relish the upcoming occasion Tuesday night.  If you are watching Idol on another channel, you may want to switch over around 10:00 EST for all the festivities.