Bruce Pearl is everywhere. After being at Tennessee for 3 seasons, we all know this about him. We expect it. He is always quick with great stories and clever one-liners that keep us all entertained and begging for more. On Thursday night however, it was Pearl in the unfamiliar position as the butt of the jokes at a $200 a plate benefit at the Knoxville Convention Center.

My personal favorite came from Dane Bradshaw who was in town after finishing his first pro season overseas:

“People always ask if I’m going to come back to UT and get into coaching,” Bradshaw said. “I had a great opportunity to learn under such a great instructor, disciplinarian and teacher of the game … but we’re not here to talk about Pat Summitt tonight.”

Good fun for a great cause!

The Solution. The buzz continues about Bobby Maze. If you’ve been out of the loop for the past couple of days, you can find everything you need to know in one of our Bobby Maze threads in the forum. Yesterday’s audio interview is a must — very entertaining.

Vols Baseball on the ropes. I urge everyone to get out and support the Vols baseball team this weekend in their crucial series with Kentucky at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. Only the top eight teams in the conference will advance to the SEC Tournament and the Vols and the Wildcats are currently tied for 8th place. It’s the final home series for Tennessee before they head to South Carolina to finish the regular season. Game times are Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 1pm and Sunday at 2pm. You can purchase tickets online.

Junior College point guard Bobby Maze has verbally committed to play basketball at Tennessee next season. This comes after Ramar Smith and Duke Crews were dismissed from the team just last week.

How big of an immediate need was the point guard position for Tennessee? Huge. True freshman Daniel West and J.P. Prince would have likely been options one and two for Tennessee prior to yesterday’s commitment.

Our crack research team here at VolNation wanted to know everything we could find about this talented guard so we could pass it along to you, our readers. I realize the length is more comparable to a novel than a blog post so try and keep up.

Maze’s basketball career to this point has been a bit of a bumpy one. The last few years of his life have been like a roller coaster ride. Our journey begins in his senior year of high school at Patterson (N.C) prep where he had reportedly transferred to get his grades in order. Scout rated him as a 3-star guard in that class of 2006. Rivals also listed him as a 3-star and had him #135 on their Top 150 of 2006.

In October 2005, Maze didn’t appear to have many offers on the table. He had missed out on national attention by not playing AAU ball until the summer of ‘05 and that had kept him somewhat under the radar. However, that summer of ‘05 when he finally did get into the AAU circuit, Maze played for the D.C. Blue Devils with Kevin Durant and Tywon Lawson — very impressive company.

By November of 2005 his name was being mentioned with some big name schools such as Georgetown, Clemson, Villanova, and Virginia Tech, among others. Coaches were starting to take notice of his quickness and his ability to get the ball to the basket at will.

Maze finished his senior season at Patterson averaging 19 points and 8 assists, helping lead his team to a 35-3 record. By February, even more schools had entered the mix for his services and Tennessee was one of them. In March of 2006, his coach listed 4 schools in contention to land Maze: Tennessee, Cincinnati, Tulane, and Auburn. Read the rest of this entry »

The Halfcourt Trap Vol. I, No. 39.

As I recover from the sensory overload last weekend in Louisville, here are the week’s hoop topics.

1. Raising Arizona? Lute Olson is certainly wasting no time reshaping the face of his program. Miles Simon is out, Russ Pennell is added to the staff. All indications are that undergound coaching legend Mike Dunlap will eventually sign on to take Kevin O’Neill’s former spot as lead assistant. Also, ace recruiter Josh Pastner is likely headed to Memphis to assume Derek Kellogg’s former duties. For a program that has prided itself on stability, U of A looks awfully disfunctional.
2. Spurs Last Stand. The model franchise of the last decade appears to be on the ropes. They have looked a step slow in the first two games against New Orleans. Failure to protect their homecourt will result in the end of their season and multiple personnel changes.
3. Eastern Conference Horror Show. The East’s marquee team facing the conference’s iconic player. Seems perfect. However, Game 1 of the Cleveland-Boston series was arguably as bad a playoff game as the League has seen. Better offense will be needed to keep people from reaching for a barf bag.
4. Teacher v. Pupil. West Virginia and Ole Miss have signed a home and home series. That will reunite Bob Huggins and his star pupil, Andy Kennedy. With both programs on the uptick, those have the potential to be fabulous games.
5. Round and Round. The NBA continues to show that they are completely creatively challenged when it comes to hiring head coaches. The same guys continue to be recycled, while top assistants like Mario Elie and Adrian Dantley are denied their opportunity. Sad and pathetic.
6. Kobe’s Coronation. The Laker superstar received his first MVP award this week(Deservedly so). Now, if his team can capture the NBA title, he will have distanced himself from the field and proven himself to the League’s standard bearer.

Until next week, stay classy, Volnation.

The countdown to kickoff continues, and along with that comes a warning to the Volnation. Prepare yourself for an earful of prognostications declaring Georgia and Florida the heirs to the SEC throne for the upcoming football season. Yes we have seen and heard it all before. It seems eerily similar to the hype surrounding both of those programs last year. Meanwhile, in Knoxville, UT is quietly toiling away….installing a new offense and propping the confidence of a defensive front seven which was a very shaky unit last year.

For a fan base that just watched their team compete for an SEC championship the Florida and Georgia even deserved hype can be hard to swallow. Sometimes it simply leaves us jumping up and down in Knoxville screaming, “What about us?” at the top of our lungs.

The harsh reality of the situation is this. The perception in the dark corners of press rooms and ESPN studios is that the Vols don’t have the athletes to compete with Florida and Georgia this year, and that could be true. With Tebow and Harvin returning and Stafford and Moreno waiting to unleash Georgia’s offensive juggernaut, UT has more questions than answers when it comes to matching up with those offensive units. As I look for those answers, frankly they are few and far between.

Before I allowed the doom and gloom to firmly set in I decided that I wanted something to be excited about. Refusing to give into the darker side of the off season, I searched the Volnation for answers to UT’s match up problems for the upcoming season. It wasn’t easy, but I have arrived at two reasons to be optimistic amidst the inevitable onslaught of the Florida and Georgia media love fest.

I am excited about Dave Clawson. There, I said it. It is nice to get that out there. Not only has Clawson installed a new offense, but he has also convinced Fulmer to play with an interchangeable offensive line; no I do not mean interchangeable in the sense of substitutions. Clawson plans to move offensive linemen in the same way he would use other skill players to create mismatches along the defensive line. Whether we agree with the actual philosophical approach or not, it should tell us one thing about Dave Clawson’s role on this team. Phil Fulmer has given him the reigns. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right, today’s blog post is about former Lady Vol basketball player Brittany Jackson. Why? I’m not sure any Lady Vol aside from Candace Parker has ever been the recipient of as much message board and blog chatter as Brittany Jackson [a quick search of the Volnation forums returned 92 threads]. The Brittany bandwagon was starting to stir again this week as VolNationals learned that Jackson was currently playing in the WNBA. Sadly, it appears that her WNBA run was short lived as she was waived by the Atlanta Dream yesterday.

The Atlanta Dream has waived former Tennessee Lady Vols basketball player Brittany Jackson.

Jackson did not play in the WNBA last season. After playing her final season at UT in 2004, she played for the San Jose Spiders of the WNBL in 2006. The past two seasons she has played for an all-star team in exhibition games against college teams and she has also played professional in Europe, according to information on her MySpace page. She has also pursued a modeling career.

The discussion of Duke Crews and Ramar Smith being dismissed continues in the forum. If you haven’t had enough, and apparently people haven’t since the thread has almost 12,000 views, feel free to jump in and add your two cents.

At this point, I’m wondering if the absence of Crews could affect the decision of Ryan Childress. It’s been rumored that Childress could be thinking of transferring or maybe even giving up basketball. If he remains at Tennessee, and we have no reason to believe he won’t at this point, without Duke on the roster he may see more action next season than he did last year.

Ramar’s departure leaves the Vols incredibly thin at point guard. Daniel West will be an incoming true freshman and it’s questionable if J.P. Prince could ever be effective at the position, even with an entire offseason of work under his belt. The answer very well may be JUCO Bobby Maze. We just learned that Maze will be on campus today visiting with Tennessee.

Verdell Jones was a name that many were throwing around as an available point guard that hadn’t committed as of yet. He committed to Indiana yesterday.

We learned today from a thread in the forum that the Athlon Sports 2008 SEC Football Annual showcases Eric Berry on the cover [click image for larger version]. This particular cover is the Tennessee and Vanderbilt version. The magazine will go on sale June 6, 2008 for a listed price of $5.99. You can pre-order them at AthlonSports.com.

A quick check of their website shows that Athlon has started their 2008 Preseason Top 25. As of today, they are up to Penn State at number 23. A new spot will be revealed each day between now and June 4th when their number one team will be announced.

Discuss Eric Berry and the Athlon cover in our Vols Forum.

Tennessee picked up their fourth football commitment for 2009 over the weekend from Milton High School (GA) running back Toney Williams.

Williams chose Tennessee over several schools that most consider to be mid-level programs: Arkansas, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi State, N.C. State, and Rutgers. The school noticeably absent from that list is Georgia. The Bulldogs did not offer him a scholarship, and from the quotes I’ve read, that could be a motivating factor for Williams.

“I just want to play Georgia bad. I can’t wait.”

Williams is definitely not a speed back, considering he runs a 4.6 second 40 (apparently that’s on a good day). He’s more of a power back that excels by using his size and strength running between the tackles and blocking. He is able to catch the football out of the backfield, as referenced by his 22 catches last season. In 2007, he spent about half of his playing time at fullback and half at tailback according to quotes from his coach.

Based on what we know about him to this point, it’s hard to image that Williams will ever see much action at tailback at Tennessee. Many believe that fullback or linebacker will likely be in his future on the hill.

Discuss Toney Williams in our Vols Recruiting Forum.

If you that didn’t get to see the Jordan Brand Classic a couple of weeks ago, here are some of the highlights of Tennessee class of 2008 signee Scotty Hopson. The clips showcase various aspects of Scotty’s game. The dunk is toward the end of the video.

Bulldog Maroon and White published a very comprehensive timeline that details Scotty Hopson’s recruitment beginning with his commitment to MSU on October 23, 2006 all the way to his signing with Tennessee in April of this year.

Much to the chagrin of a lot of sports writers and college football fans, the “big 6”, and Notre Dame, decided the status quo is what should rule the day.

There are many reasons why this playoff, or any other version of a playoff, won’t happen. Well, won’t happen any time soon. The earliest it could happen is 2014, six long years away.

Here’s a summary of topics that were relevant this weekend:

• TV doesn’t care one way or the other. Fox is enjoying great success with the current format, and honestly, they have basically said, they aren’t opposed to enhancing it, but are “thrilled” with the way it is now. They actually won an Emmy over the Super Bowl and World Series for their coverage of the BCS. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies here.
• The Big 10 and Pac 10 are arm in arm with each other over the Rose Bowl. And the Rose Bowl likes it that way. We got our big dose of reality last year when the Rose Bowl had the opportunity to put USC and Georgia in the same game, yet took an albeit deserving, but much less sexy, Illinois to face the Trojans, for fear that a USC/GA game paired against an LSU/OSU game could possibly look like a seeded tournament. Well, that, and the Rose Bowl just isn’t going to break tradition when it doesn’t have to.
• It’s clear that the SEC and ACC do want a plus one. All other conferences, and Notre Dame, are against it. It’s pretty clear why Notre Dame, the Big 10 and Pac 10 are against, though I’m fuzzy as to why the Big East and Big 12 are against it. The issue, it seems, is that it “looks like a playoff”. With the bigger issue being, how would they keep it to only 4? These things do have the tendency to snowball. The NCAA basketball tournament is a good example of this. But that’s a pretty weak reason to snuff the idea all together. I would hope that conference commissioners could come up with a better reason than “well it looks too much like a playoff, and we’re against that”.
• There is an earnest effort to keep the regular season’s importance intact. Anything that seems to remotely impact the relative importance of regular season match ups is deemed bad for the game. This sport after all does have the most intriguing regular season in ALL of sports. Combine that with the most controversial post season in ALL of sports, and what you have is pure gold, from a fan interest and marketing standpoint. For 3 months every year, Saturdays are treated as ‘events’ all across the country. The other 9 months, people like you and I bitch and moan about the BCS. It’s beautiful when you really think about it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Halfcourt Trap Vol. I, No. 38

With visions of trifectas and mint juleps dancing in my head, here are the basketball topics holding my interest this week.

1. A Pioneer Passes Away. Will Robinson was the man who persuaded the Detroit Pistons to draft Dennis Rodman and Joe Dumars. That alone would give one an esteemed basketball legacy. However, it ranks a distance second to the fact that Mr. Robinson was the first African American head coach at the D-I level. Basketball lost a great ambassador and a superb gentleman with his recent passing.
2. What Might Have Been. Randy Livingston retired this weekend. It probably didn’t even make the news and notes or transactions sections of your local sports section. Livingston was a heralded a high school player as the early ’90s produced. Several knee injuries robbed him of his explosiveness and he never achieved the greatness expected of him. He did, however, forge a solid career in basketball’s minor leagues and became a wonderful mentor for younger players. He never allowed what would have been justified bitterness or self pity to overwhelm him. Livingston has stated that he plans to enter coaching. Here’s hoping his good fortune in that profession matches the awful luck he encountered as a player.
3. Desert Eclipse. The joyride in Phoenix is over. Defensive averse, shoot ‘em up basketball has again been proven to be a sure recipe for failure. Now, it will be intriguing to see how Steve Kerr retools his club in an attempt to remain competitive.
4. Cuban Maverick Crisis. Less than two years after holding a 2-0 series lead and a 14 point lead with 5 minutes to go in Game 3, Avery Johnson is unemployed. Dallas owner/megalomaniac Mark Cuban has said he needs to find a coach who can deliver Dallas a championship. CBS gadfly Gregg Doyel has stated that Rick Pitino will be a candidate for the position. Can Cuban really be that detatched from reality?
5. In The Year 2010. Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie is putting together a monster recruiting class for ‘10. It is just another example of the rising stakes of competition in the SEC East. Good luck, Darrin Horn. You’ll need it.
6. Hello, Larry. To the surprise only of people who have been dwelling in caves for three decades, Larry Brown is back on the NBA sidelines. Job #9 is in Charlotte, the city where his coaching career began and his 100+ year old mother resides. I’ll predict this will turn out to be a fabulous final chapter for arguably the best pure basketball coach of all time.

Until next week, stay classy, Volnation.