Scout.com’s Randy Moore draws a parallel between Tennessee’s loss to the LSU Tigers back in January and Duke’s loss to them last night. Moore observed that LSU head coach John Brady used the same blueprint for each game: shut down the three-point specialist with 6′ 5″ defensive guru Garrett Temple. Tennessee’s Chris Lofton shot 1 of 7 against LSU for a whopping 2 points. Last night, LSU held Golden-Boy-Scoring-Machine J.J. Redick to 3 of 18 and a season low of 11 points.

Pretty impressive coaching and defensive execution.

It was a recipe for disaster. A sports conspiracy-theorist’s worst fear. The work of a diabolical mastermind bent on televising an upset of an over-seeded, over-confident team on a losing streak by an under-seeded, no-name school whose time had come.

Too bad Chris Lofton hadn’t read the script.

The game had turned into a defensive struggle, and the drama was building as planned. Senior and team leader C.J. Watson was sitting out extended minutes with four fouls. Coach Bruce Pearl’s spread motion offense wasn’t producing any open looks. Every time that Lofton, the team’s biggest scoring threat, tried to rub a defender off of a screen, he found himself sandwiched between two defenders instead.

With 5:00 minutes left to play and the score tied at 58, Watson finally re-entered the game. Tennessee hit a two, Winthrop hit a three. The teams traded missed opportunities, fouls, and turnovers.

With the game tied at 61 and 21 seconds remaining, Watson scambled around the perimeter awhile before stopping and popping at the top of the key. The shot was too strong, and the long rebound was grasped by six hands: Lofton’s and those of two opponents. Nobody really won this battle, but Lofton at least succeeded in pushing the ball away from the crowd, and Bradshaw ran down and secured the loose ball. Pearl called time out with 2.9 seconds left and possession of the ball.

Pearl made up a play on the spot and diagrammed it for the players. Wingate would later admit some serious confusion. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he said after the game. “Coach Pearl drew up three different diagrams and told me to go some place.” Controlled chaos without the control.

Anyway, Bradshaw positioned himself courtside to inbound the ball. Wingate decided to stand at the near post. Lofton stood at the far post, Patterson was at the top of the key, and Watson was at mid-court. The whistle blew, and all of the players moved at once.

Lofton darted to the free throw line to set a pick for Patterson, who used Lofton to scrape off his defender and headed toward the basket on the far side of the court. For a split second, Patterson was open for a lob next to the basket, but Bradshaw did not see him until Patterson’s defender caught up with him.

Meanwhile, Wingate slid toward the perimeter to set a screen for Lofton, who was continuing around the arc, his man absolutely glued to him and holding him the whole time. Lofton gained the slightest amount of separation from Wingate’s screen and raced toward the corner, looking over his right shoulder for the pass from Bradshaw. Bradshaw tossed the ball to Lofton, who awkwardly twisted and squared up to the basket in two steps. The second foot planted, he executed an amazing, high-arcing fade-away jumper over the outstretched arm of his defender.

Patterson thought it was long. Wingate thought it was short.

Lofton knew it was in.

Vols win, 63-61.

Coach Pearl began his post-game interview by ticking off a few of the more memorable finishes to games in this magical season: Lofton’s steal-and-heave to Bradshaw for a layup against Florida the first time, Bradshaw’s sweet steal-and-spin move to beat Florida the second time, and Lofton’s awkward twisting fade-away jumper with .4 seconds left for the first post-season win in what seems like forever.

Oh, and don’t forget these guys:

• Andre Patterson had a double double;
• Major Wingate will not have to be fed to his snakes after all, as he had one of the best games of his career, going five for eight from the field and five of six on free throws while blocking three shots. Plus, he played solid defense against Winthrop’s Craig Bradshaw, who was a handful all game.
• Jordan Howell, who played heavy and important minutes while C.J. Watson was on the bench with foul trouble.

Bob Kesling’s call of Chris Lofton’s game-winning shot.

Coach Pearl’s post-game interview, from UTSports.com.

Take a look at the picture of the shot just before Lofton lets it fly. Does it look like it has any chance of going in? Winthrop’s Torrell Martin, who defended Lofton on the play, didn’t think so. “It’s a one-in-a-million shot,” he said after the game. “It looked like the ball curved in.”

The Tennessee Volunteer basketball team is overjoyed with its No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Its opponent, Winthrop, is not.

A four-and-six close to a season, the Dane Bradshaw cat-out-of-the-bag wrist injury, Chris Lofton’s struggles to get open, the team’s wading-pool depth, and a penchant for early exits in tournament season.

An opponent with something to prove.

Could spell trouble for the Volunteers.

It was supposed to be the beginning of a reversal of fortunes for tournament play.

Instead, it was a double reverse. Same as it ever was.

The Tennessee Volunteer basketball team lost — again — its first game in the SEC Tournament. Go ahead and erase those penciled-in appointments for 1:00 today and 1:00 tomorrow. Florida or Kentucky or LSU or some other team will be SEC Champions after all.

Point guard C.J. Watson showed up with 23 points on eight of 12 shooting including three of five three-pointers. Dane Bradshaw was okay, despite having a wrist injury for over a month that requires surgery. Christ Lofton and Andre Patterson, however, had subpar games with only 12 and two points respectively.

The key to the loss, however, was probably the turnovers. Tennessee had 21 to South Carolina’s 16.

What does this mean to the Vols’ chances in the NCAA Tournament? Not sure. On the one hand, Tennessee is on a skid, losing four of their last six games. Maybe their shallow depth is showing late in the season.

On the other hand, South Carolina had seen Bruce Pearl’s controlled chaos style of play for the third time, and the conventional wisdom is that it’s just very hard to beat a good team three times. How many of the Vols’ opponents in the NCAA Tournament will have seen the odd style and have time to prepare for it?

And the Vols will get some rest now. By the time they crank up the music for the Big Dance, the team will have played only one game in almost two weeks. That should help with the legs and the hops.

Back to the other hand again, there’s the rust issue.

Is Tennessee’ basketball season down to only one more game? Or do they have one last run in them?

What do y’all think?

Well, the basketball Vols used smothering defense to erase a 16-point second-half deficit and beat Vanderbilt 68-59 on Saturday. It wasn’t pretty early. I remember thinking at about the 12:00 minute mark when the Vols had two points that at that pace, they would score eight points by the end of the game.

But they eventually stopped the bleeding and then caught fire in the second half, using their defense of all things, to stymie the Commodores. Chris Lofton was 2 of 11 in three point attempts, but was 6-7 inside the arc.

Tennessee now gets a bit of well deserved rest in the form of a bye in the first round of the SEC Tournament. Their next game will be at 1:00 p.m. on Friday against the winner of Thursday’s South Carolina-Mississippi State match up. Should they win, they’ll play at 12:00 on Saturday against Alabama, Kentucky, or Ole Miss. The SEC Championship game is at 12:00 on Sunday.

Note: the Getting to Know Tennessee’s Class of 2006 series will resume tomorrow. Maybe Friday.

The Tennessee Volunteer basketball team continued its winning ways last night with a huge win over its nemesis to the north, the Kentucky Wildcats.

Former Kentucky Mr. Basketball Chris Lofton was again the catalyst, scoring a career-high 31 points in the Vols’ 75-67 victory. UT ended an eight-game losing streak to Kentucky and strengthened its leading position in the SEC East.

Said Chris Lofton, “I got in my rhythm and my teammates kept feeding me the ball. I just tried to block everything out tonight.”

The Vols led most of the way, but Kentucky closed the gap as the clock wound down. Then, with 2:26 left in the game and the Vols behind 64-65, Major Wingate put Tennessee back on top with a bucket underneath to make the score 66-65.

Lofton scored the next seven points and was still calling for the ball when the clock ran out. “I was going to do something I probably shouldn’t have done,” he said. “I’m glad they didn’t throw me the ball.’’

I noticed something from the television coverage that was very telling. When the Vols scored the basket that effectively guaranteed the win, they danced over to the timeout huddle only to be greeted by coach Bruce Pearl yelling at them to calm down, to control their elation. Not one single player on this team has ever beaten Kentucky, much less at Rupp Arena. Pearl looked like he was instructing them, however, to act like they weren’t surprised they won.

Pearl coaches 24-7. During the game, he coaches from tip-off to final buzzer. His style of play uses all 94 feet of the court, and he makes the most of the talent on his team.

Pearl wins because he uses everything at his disposal.

Lots-o-news on the Tennessee Volunteer basketball team today. A few odds and ends:

• The Vols’ win over the No. 2-ranked Florida Gators on Saturday has propelled the team into the top 25. Tennessee is No. 19 in the AP poll and No. 20 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll. Said coach Pearl:
  

  At this point of the season, there’s some substance to it. After the Texas game (Dec. 17), I don’t know we deserved to be top 25. But, really, the body of work to this point, with us competing well on the road in defeat as well as the quality victories we have, yeah, I think we’re deserving of the ranking.

• Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley complained to the SEC office about the Volunteer fans storming the court after the big win. (Pulling a John Pennington here), to quote Brad Paisley, “Waa, waa, waa, waa, waa.” (That’s still very hard to type, by the way.) UT was fined $5,000 for the on-the-court celebration. UT athletic director Mike Hamilton and coach Pearl both asked Volunteer fans to refrain from doing it again. Subsequent violations could cost UT up to $50,000.
• Coach Pearl has written a letter to UT donors and season ticket holders imploring them to buy as many tickets as possible for UT’s home game against the Kentucky Wildcats on March 1, 2006. It’s a campaign to “keep the blue out” of Thompson-Boling Arena.
• On that note, thanks to Akijikan, who pointed out that “The Summit” is the name for the court in Thompson-Boling, not the new name for the arena. No offense to Thompson or to Boling, but I think “The Summit” makes a great name for the UT arena and an odd name for a floor, but I have too few dollars to make my opinion count.
• Coach Pearl said this week that talk of an NCAA tournament berth is still a bit premature: “Just the math doesn’t allow it. You have to win half your conference games, and we’ve won three.”
• Sophomore guard Chris Lofton, who scored 29 points against the Gators and made the defensive play of the game, was named the SEC Player of the Week.

John Pennington, master of weaving pop culture into sports observations, posts another excellent piece, this one on how the Tennessee Volunteer basketball team is racking up the wins:

For the Vols to win [against the No. 2-ranked Florida Gators], the following had to happen:1. The young Gators would have get rattled early by an SRO crowd at Thompson-Boling.

2. Both Chris Lofton and CJ Watson would have to have great games.

3. Tennessee would have to get Major Wingate’s best game of the year to help offset Florida’s size advantage.

And we all know how it turned out… exactly NONE of those things happened.

But Bruce’s Believers still came through.

HOW?

That’s been the question all year. National media, local media, fans, everyone’s been asking the same thing: “How does this team keep winning?”

Last week I pointed to “Heart and Effort,” which I think should be the title of any DVDs the Vol Network intends to sell about these guys. But I think Lloyd Bridges might have said it better (and I paraphrase):

“I gotta say something about that (team out) there, and I can sum it all up in just one word: courage, dedication, daring, pride, pluck, spirit, grit, metal, and G-U-T-S, guts! Why, (these Vols have) got more guts in (their) little finger(s) than most of us have in our entire large intestine. Including the colon!”

Good stuff.

A day after the Tennessee Volunteers’ huge win over the Florida Gators, and Knoxville is still buzzing:

“It was like Knoxville was a different town today, you know?” Pearl said. “I can still feel the excitement.”No doubt, the carryover from the Vols’ 80-76 upset over No. 2 and previously unbeaten Florida has been impressive.

Turn on the radio to get a taste of what’s being discussed in every barber shop and office water cooler.

What’s just as remarkable as Knoxville’s transformation to a basketball town is the short time it’s taken Pearl to put the pieces in place to make it all happen.

Pearl said Friday it’s more than just his team’s fast start, which has the Vols 12-3 overall and 3-1 SEC, on the brink of cracking today’s Top 25 polls.

“The fans aren’t coming (Saturday) night because we’re winning,” Pearl said Friday. “They’re coming because of the effort our players our putting out.”

The players, in turn, put out the effort because they believe in Pearl. Already, Pearl’s fan-friendly ways have rubbed off on his players.

The actual game atmosphere was apparently something not seen since football season.  Well, since the beginning of football season.

Fans camped out (yes, this is Knoxville, but it’s still winter) to get tickets to the sold out game, and coach Bruce Pearl gave them pizzas and a pep talk while they waited.

At C.J. Watson’s suggestion, the players entered the arena through the crowd in sort of a mini Vol Walk.  Football coach Phillip Fulmer and his wife and Lady Vols coach Pat Summit were on hand to lend their support.

As for the game itself, the team reminded me of a yippy little dog nipping at the heels of an oversized opponent, more of a nuisance than anything else.  It looked like they were playing as well as they could, but that it would not be enough.

With only a few minutes remaining, though, they tied the game and then traded leads until the end, when they finally pulled ahead.  There were a couple of moments when it looked like poor shot selection was going to doom them, but Chris Lofton made the play of the game when he intercepted the ball on a Gators 2-on-1 break and heaved the ball the length of the floor to Dane Bradshaw, who converted a lay-up to seal the victory.

The fans rushed the court in celebration.  If there had been goal posts, they would have been torn down.

A great win for the basketball Vols.

The Vols lost to LSU 88-74 Saturday night for a variety of reasons:

• Sophomore guard Chris Lofton was missing in action, scoring only two points on 1-of-7 shooting.
• Coach Bruce Pearl’s “controlled chaos” style of play did not pay dividends in the second half.  LSU intimidated the Vols all game, blocking several shots.  After halftime, LSU hit 76 percent of its attempts from the field and racked up 58 points. The Vols did force 25 turnovers, but were unable to convert most of them into points.
• In the end, bigger was just better than faster.