“This is a big boy’s business,” Fulmer said, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. “He understood. He was very professional. We talked yesterday. It was simply a matter of Coach Pruitt doing what he thought was right for his program and Robert.
“Robert was fine. Robert is OK. He didn’t like it, I’m not saying that. But he’s OK. He understood. It’s a big boy business.”
Everybody’s got one
With news being pretty scarce, everybody’s starting in with their opinions:
Weinke spent last year as an offensive analyst for the Alabama Crimson Tide and worked closely with Pruitt. Prior to that, he was a quarterbacks coach for the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams and the Director of Football at IMG Academy in Florida for five years. He coached current Alabama running back Bo Scarbrough while at IMG.
In his playing days, Weinke won the Heisman in 1999 and led his Florida State team to the 1999 BCS National Championship. He spent six seasons with the Carolina Panthers and one with the San Francisco 49ers.
The Vols add yet another guy to their growing coaching support staff with the arrival of Joe Osovet, a top JUCO coach known for his offensive prowess. He’s expected to be an offensive analyst.
Osovet made the announcement via his Twitter account:
Osovet is the head coach and offensive coordinator at ASA College in Brooklyn, New York, and has made the ASA Avengers a JUCO powerhouse. They compiled a 9-1 record this season and put up 38.1 points and 446.3 yards of total offense per game. They scored 67 points or more in three games. Over the past six years, he’s scored 75 points or more five times. Osovet has been heavily utilizing RPOs since 2001 and has studied under Rich Rodriguez and Art Briles.
Osovet had been a candidate for the then-vacant wide receivers coaching job, but that gig went to David Johnson. Nevertheless, he and Jeremy Pruitt apparently go way back to Pruitt’s days at Georgia, and Pruitt wanted him on the staff badly enough to offer him a quality control assistant.
News broke yesterday that Vols running backs coach Robert Gillespie is leaving Tennessee. This was a surprising move, as Gillespie was the one guy from Butch Jones’ coaching staff that had not been dismissed, so it seemed like he would be around for the long term or at least through the end of the last year of his contract. But instead, he’s gone.
Most reports are that this was a mutual decision, although John Brice added this juicy bit to his post on the subject:
Per sources, Gillespie did not mesh with Pruitt and the Vols’ new staff. In part of his culture change identified as necessary to push Tennessee forward, Pruitt found what sources said were “stale” mindsets.
I have to say that I did notice some palpable awkwardness at the Knoxville post signing day event when Gillespie and Jeremy Pruitt were both asked about Gillespie staying on. They said the right things, but there was no expected mutual gushing.
The initial reports are that former Florida State quarterback and Alabama analyst Chris Weinke is the guy to watch to replace Gillespie.
Coach Pruitt has outlined his plan for spring practice, and it’s a bit different than it has been in the past. The team will be practicing three days per week over a five week period, which will give the players a day in between practices to internalize the new things they’re being taught. They’re also going to sort of double up and continue to lift like it’s the offseason even during spring practice. Spring practice begins on March 20 and ends with the Orange and White Game on April 21.
Pruit is super high on 3-star defensive back Trevon Flowers, calling him the “steal of this class.” Flowers didn’t play football at all in high school until his senior year and yet has the skill set to play any of the six defensive back positions.
NFL Draft analyst Chris Landry identifies VFL John Kelly as a potential sleeper, one who “has a chance to be a better pro than he was in college.” He also says that Kelly was criminally underused, so there’s that.
The Tennessee basketball team was looking to put a humiliating loss to Alabama last Saturday behind them with a great performance against South Carolina last night, and it’s a good thing they came out with a lot more energy and focus than they displayed against the Tide because without it, they would have lost to a Gamecocks team that was on a five-game losing streak.
As it turns out, though, that energy, effort, and focus translated into a good 70-67 win over Frank Martin’s South Carolina team in Thompson-Boling last night.
They looked much better right out of the gate, but the Gamecocks were looking good as well, and the Vols had a tough time pulling away. They led by as many as 10 points in the first half and went into halftime leading 38-34.
Carolina came out swinging in the second, though, and tied the game at 40 early. When Tennessee answered by going on an 18-5 run, the Gamecocks responded with a 10-0 run of their own.
As the game wound down, Carolina continued chipping away at the Vols’ lead and narrowed it to a single point with 36 seconds left. At that point, the Vols advanced the ball to halfcourt, called a timeout, and designed a play for Grant Williams on the block. Good call, as Williams hit a well-contested shot just before the double-team arrived and put his team up 70-67 with 11 seconds to go.
Rick Barnes instructed his team to foul on Carolina’s final possession, and they didn’t, but Carolina missed a desperation three anyway, and the Vols went to the showers with a 70-67 win.
Williams led Tennessee with a solid all-around night:
Despite the return of the energy, defense, and focus that has characterized this team most of the season, the recent trend of turnovers by Tennessee’s guards is beginning to become a bit worrisome. It’s entirely unexpected for a team with such a high assist percentage and assist-to-turnover ratio on the season.
But it was a win, and the Vols move to sole possession of second place in the SEC standings with a record of 9-4, 1.5 games behind Auburn. Next up is a trip to Georgia this Saturday at 6:00 p.m.
Seriously, though, there’s this: “I hope you’re never who you are.” It was a toss-away line, but I absolutely love the philosophy it evidences, that everyone always needs to and can improve.
The team gets a chance to rinse out that nasty aftertaste of sulphur and sweat tonight at home against South Carolina, which is on a five-game losing streak. The game tips at 9:00 and will be televised on ESPNU.
And besides, apart from the misery of the weekend, the Vols still have a terrific resume. They have some really good wins against really good teams, and in addition, their only losses have come to good teams as well:
The six teams that have beaten @Vol_Hoops this season all occupy a top-35 spot in today’s NCAA RPI
In fact, in ESPN’s latest power rankings, the Vols are still No. 13, just behind Duke, Kansas, and North Carolina, which is pretty good company, assuming you’re talking basketball.
Football
Now that both National Signing Days are behind us, it’s time for everyone to start taking a closer look at what we have on campus.
The good news is that not only do road losses generally not count against you very much when seeding time comes, margin of defeat apparently doesn’t matter much at all. The NCAA Selection Committee released its top 16 seeds yesterday and not only did Tennessee still come in at No. 13, the committee chair explicitly said that the Vols getting run over at Alabama didn’t hurt Tennessee in the eyes of the committee:
(The discussion about the Vols begins at around the 3:45 mark.)
All aboard! A draft analyst is shoveling coal into the Rashaan Gaulden hype train, saying that he’s a top 50 pick. The thing also says that Gaulden has “discipline issues,” which surprised me. I know that picture of him giving the double bird to Alabama fans is still circulating the internet and that Kirk Herbstreit didn’t like it (but also loved Baker Mayfield, go figure), but honestly, having lived through it vicariously myself, I’m inclined to extend a little grace for a short outburst in the heat of the moment in the middle of last season. Is there something more that I’m missing?
Mystery Solved. Pruitt has already diagnosed Tennessee’s injury problems of the past two seasons: We’re too small. He also doesn’t like players on the ground in practice and thinks you can teach a guy how to tackle well by learning how to “thud.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you this: When I grew up, when I associated Tennessee, I associated orange and white,” Pruitt said during the post-National Signing Day event at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful at all. But, to me, when you go play a football game, what color your uniforms (are) don’t really matter. So, when I think of Tennessee, I think of orange and white. I don’t think you need no gimmicks.”
“But, you know, probably the best PR we got is winning football games in the fall. I can come here, and these folks can like me, and we can talk and all that, but if we ain’t winning this fall or next fall, it don’t matter how many times I come over here. So I probably need to spend most of my time on the things that’s gonna help us win football games.”
“The thing is,” Pruitt added, “it’s not about what we know about the opponent, it’s what they players know. To me, whether it’s 11-personnel runs or a defensive back having to give a wide receiver report, or what’s the opponent running in their stacks and bunches, you’re trying to figure it out.
“It’s good to hear the guys communicate it back. I think the great ones take pride in it.”
Wait, what? New strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald is the only guy on Pruitt’s staff with whom Pruitt “had no prior relations.” This is where you make your own jokes, because I’ve already deleted three.
Nobody’s perfect, but for some there’s proof. Pruitt says the whole Jauan Jennings thing is “one day at a time.” He seems to understand both that kids make mistakes and that there are consequences for those mistakes:
“One of the first things when I got to Tennessee, Coach Fulmer, he filled me in on the situation,” Pruitt answered. “The way I look at it is this: There ain’t no perfect folks in this room. There ain’t no perfect coaches. There ain’t no perfect players. And if they had Instagram and all that stuff back when we were all growing up, some of us might not be in this room.
“I’ll say this: Jauan knows he made a mistake. He’s embarrassed by it, and I think we’re going to give him an opportunity in-house to find his way back on the team. But — and there’s always a but with it, right? — he’s got to do that. There ain’t going to be nothing given to him and he knows that. It’s a long ways to go and we’ll see. Hopefully he can do that.”
“One of the biggest things we talked about, Kentucky was 17-6 and people were questioning their team — and we’re 17-5 and people are saying that’s the best they’ve seen here in a while,” Schofield said. “Why is that OK? We want more. We have to keep playing like men.”
