Spoke Too Soon

Spoke too soon! I said specifically in my last post that Tennessee at that #1 spot was not a lock! Just a few hours later the Tennessee Volunteers lost to #14 Vanderbilt 72-69. And it was a good ass game!!

It's clear that when you're the top team there's a bullseye on your back, and every other club wants to take you down. Memphis handled, and is still handling, that fact really well. It's amazing when a team can go unbeaten during the regular season. We all know it's rare, so I'm not faulting Memphis in any way. But damn Tennessee!! 1 stinkin day after the rankings were released the top team fell, HARD.

But there could have been some extenuating circumstances. Maybe the Volunteers were thrown off like I was, with the layout of Vanderbilt's Memorial Gymnasium. It's the most confusing, and unique, setup in all of basketball. Architect Edwin Keeble built it in the 50s to be a concert hall/gym and you can definitely see the concert hall style coming through. The court itself is elevated, and fan seating begins just a few feet off the sidelines and a few feet below the court. (If you were standing up in the from row, the court would be at your hips) The team benches are underneath each basket, a few feet behind the baseline, instead of along the sidelines like every other basketball court you've ever seen. So instead of the coaches yelling from the sidelines, they're screaming all the way down the court. Being that far away from coach and then looking for him underneath the basket would throw me off too. Not that Tennessee head coach Bruce Pearl was hard to spot in that bright orange jacket he's been known to wear. The commentators even mentioned how Vandy head coach Kevin Stallings has a special 2-finger whistle he uses when he wants to get his teams attention. Talk about home court advantage...

Shout out to Vandy, who played like they wanted it more. Tennessee played their usual style, trying to dominate physically, and the Commodores weren't havin that. Shan Foster, the second leading scorer in Vanderbilt history, had a great game. Foster scored 32 points and was 6-9 from behind the arc.

The hope is that Tennessee can rebound IMMEDIATELY from this loss and win their next three games. The truth is it's nice to be ranked #1 during the regular season, but when March Madness comes the Volunteers will probably be the 1-3 seed in the midwest division of the bracket. And there's a reason why it's called Madness; the shit is crazy. Any given day any team can be taken down, regardless of rankings, team history or NBA-bound players. I cannot wait!

***I've heard people make the case for the 3-point line in college basketball to be moved back closer, if not even, to the NBA 3 point line. In the NCAA, the line is at 19 feet 9 inches, while the pros have it at 23'9". Most of the members of the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Committee agreed, and voted to move the line back a full foot to 20-9 by the start of the 2008-09 season. And I totally agree. I like to see all these college guys hitting threes, but this move will take sinking 3s back to more of a specialty role rather than something every guy on the court can do. The women's committee opted not to change, which means there will be 2 different color 3-point lines on college courts shared by men & women. Weird...