Hoops
Warning: Mixed metaphor zone. If you’re still a wallflower, standing on the sideline, reluctant for whatever reason to jump on the Vols hoops bandwagon — it’s time to find your courage, get in the game, and enjoy the ride.
Tennessee men’s hoops is quietly becoming a great team, doing what great teams do like beating opponents by 33 points.
Their coach, who has gotten them to this point by always, always, always finding something they can do better, is having to work especially hard to find something to criticize (video).
The opponents are handing out the rat poison of effusive praise like it’s candy, and the pollsters are piling on, slotting Tennessee at #15.
And we’re talking realistic dreams of a two-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
So make yourself happy and get on the train before it leaves the station.
Tonight, #15 Tennessee travels to Rupp Arena to take on #24 Kentucky, and we’ll be re-introducing the GRT game thread for it. John Calipari is calling for all hands on deck, so not only do we have a road trip to a blue-blood rival at hand, that rival is wide awake and in attack mode. Will’s Tennessee-Kentucky game preview tells you what to watch for. This is basketball, so a road loss to a ranked rival won’t be devastating to the Vols, but tonight provides a significant opportunity to sweep Kentucky and continue to build momentum heading into the postseason.
Recruiting
Tomorrow is National Signing Day, and nobody knows anything about how the Vols are going to finish.
247Sports has an 18-click slideshow Crystal Ball update on the Vols’ remaining tagets. It’s kind of depressing, to be honest, as it only gives the edge to the Vols for 5-star Quay Walker and 3-star Cedric Tillman and puts them in a tie for 3-star Otito Obgonnia.
This similar post from SEC Country is a relatively more optimistic version of the same thing, guessing that Tennessee leads for Walker, 4-star Isaac Taylor-Stuart, and 4-star Emmit Gooden. The reason for the increased optimism is likely this post, also from SEC Country. Rivals, too, appears to think the Vols’ chances to land ITS are better than the Crystal Ball.
SB Nation has an NSD headquarters, complete with some announcement times for tomorrow.
We’ll have more on recruiting today and tomorrow, but for now, remember this: Nobody knows anything.
Lady Vols
The Lady Vols beat Vanderbilt two days ago, 74-64. Highlights:
Other fun stuff
Congrats to VFL Derek Barnett for his role in winning the Super Bowl for the Philadelphia Eagles and to Tom Brady for losing well:
Just witnessed this encounter in walkway after #SuperBowl: @Patriots QB Tom Brady congratulating former @Vol_Football and @baeagles star @dbarnett25, who had a big day for @Eagles. #Eagles pic.twitter.com/BbXyt6gdsj
— Jim Wyatt (@jwyattsports) February 5, 2018
And also to Butch Jones, Mike Debord, or whoever’s actually responsible for designing the play that resulted in quarterback Nick Foles catching a touchdown pass.
I read yesterday that the Eagles call that play “Clemson” because they got it from Chad Morris (they ran the same play with Tajh Boyd and Deandre Hopkins several years ago,) but who knows.
Yeah, I was skeptical that the trace-back ended at Jones/Debord. It’s a good play, and unique enough for it to be plausible, especially with Dobbs at QB and Jennings throwing the pass, but I’m also not surprised to hear someone else did it before that.