As the weekend rolls around, and the #1 ranking more than likely drifts out the window, the BasketVols are going to face a tough test on Sunday.  The test doesn’t come only from the Kentucky Wildcats, but also from facing off against themselves and their focus for the rest of the season.

The loss to Vanderbilt was a crushing blow to the manhood of Tennessee, as well as to the sanctity of normal college basketball arenas (apparently plans are already in the works to move the football sidelines to behind the endzones for next year), but focus is now needed to be able to regroup, and otherwise move on to bigger and better things.

Kentucky rolls into town on Sunday, and Florida and South Carolina loom before the start of the SEC Tournament.  If the BasketVols can have a strong showing in the final few games as well as a deep run, perhaps a victory in the SEC Tourney, the #1 seed for the NCAA tournament should be locked up.  Isn’t it weird how just 3-4 years ago, making it to the tournament was the goal?  My how things change.

The Vols, much like the Commodores on Tuesday, will hopefully be looking to exact revenge upon a team that embarrassed them earlier in the season.  Tennessee is thus far undefeated at home for the season, and it will take a solid effort to beat Kentucky.  What else would a coach say here?  The game against Kentucky is now the most important game of the season.  You know, it actually kind of is, because it will determine to what extent the Vols slide in the polls on Monday.

But realistically, the rest of the games on the schedule only have a bearing on seeding in the tournament.  Of course, this is important as well, but this year, the idea is NOT to lose to some no-name team in the second round with a high seed, or to lose a 20 point lead to a team that can’t hang with the SEC (ahem, Ohio State).

This is the part of the season that people point to when they say that college football is better than college basketball, because the games don’t really matter, but in reality, it’s the calm before the storm of college basketball debauchery the likes of which would make the porn industry blush.  If football had a playoff?  Well, for at least a month out of the year, football would be my fourth visit on the information superhighway (the first three? um, scholastic research).  Bring it on.

Ohio State sucks.

Speculation. It is the gateway to disappointment and heartbreak. Playing out possible scenarios before they happen. We’ve all done it, and we’ve all had it blow up in our faces at one point or another. That being said, I’d like to speculate on the remainder of the basketball season. Of course, there is still a lot of basketball to be played on both the men’s and women’s sides, but like I said, speculation is still fun.

At this point, the possibilities are plentiful. The men’s team is poised to be a #1 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament (of course, following the loss to Vandy Tuesday night, it’ll be a bit harder than it once was), and barring a late season collapse, the women’s team will also likely be a #1 seed. That being said, it’s a strong possibility that both teams will make it to the Final Four portions of their respective tournaments, at which point, it’d be 2 games from national titles. If Tennessee could pull off the sweep and win both the Men’s and Women’s National Championships in basketball, it would cement Tennessee as one of the most dominant sports programs in the nation. The only other team to even come close would be the Gators of the last few years, and UConn when they won both the men’s and women’s championships.

Of course, Tennessee would still have the football season to play, and assuming the new coaching staff does a bang up job, we should easily win the BCS Championship this year too. Isn’t speculation fun? Assuming all of these things happen, I will go ahead and proclaim Tennessee to be the greatest athletic program in the history of NCAA sports. It’s great because Florida was thinking they were so great for so long, but as it turns out, Tennessee is just that much better. Eat that Gators!

It was nice while it lasted I guess….

In a game officiated to the delight of perhaps only Ted Valentine, Tennessee lost to the Commodores and the referees on Tuesday night. Awesome.

First off, let me say that Vandy, for being the “Harvard of the South” has some of the most classless fans ever, and you know, ugly cheerleaders to boot.

Seriously though, just in case you guys didn’t get the memo, here’s the officiating rundown for the game.

1. First off, we’ve got Tennessee. Whenever they do anything… like say, pointing? That’s a foul.Yep, if they’re wearing any kind of orange, and do anything to even get CLOSE to anyone wearing a white jersey, go ahead and blow your whistle. In fact, when orange has the ball, just breathe through your whistle. It’ll just be easier, mmkay?

2. Next up, we’ve got Vandy’s side of the ref’s manual. If white does anything to orange, see if there is any way to foul orange. If it looks too too TOO bad, go ahead and don’t call anything. I know, it might seem weird, especially if people are being tackled to the ground, but still, trust me, it’s better to not blow any whistles, because you want to save the ‘ole cork ball for orange (see point 1)

Kevin Stallings said during his post-game interview…

We’re not much into gloating, we like to do it with class…

Um, I suppose you don’t speak for your fans in any way nor yourself as you do the bow to the student section? Ass.

Am I being a sore loser? Hell yeah, because we lost to the shittiest fans and some of the worst officiating I’ve seen this year. Crap, I think Tennessee just got T’ed up for me making that comment.

I suppose the good that came of it, the last 2 times the #1 team was beaten by Vanderbilt, the teams made it either to the Final Four (Kentucky), or the National Championship (Florida).

Have an iPhone? Well, aren’t you just special. Well, anyway, if you do, you can now view awesome fulmer’s belly with the nifty iPhone shortcut, whether you like it or not!

Muahahaha.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, bookmark us now using CTRL-D or Command-D (Mac) or you know however else.  We also have handy RSS feeds available for use.

Isn’t that cool? Of course, if you’re rich enough to have an iPhone in the first place, you should really consider sending me money. In which case, thanks in advance.

As I mentioned yesterday, Joel’s out of town, and has left his venerable site, RockyTopTalk.com to the hands of the inmates at the asylum (a.k.a. the other UT Bloggers).  That having been said, and my terrible attempt at a good post aside, there has been some spectacular pinch-writing over there.  Check out this post from LawVol (of Gate21 fame), which speaks of the hiring of Bruce Pearl and the emergence of Tennessee basketball from a horrible, horrible plague to the #1 team in the country.

Leave him some nice comments too, as he’s really gone above and beyond with a very well written article.

And now, the aftermath. The men’s basketball team, coming off of their biggest win of the year (and arguably in school history), have the balance of the SEC schedule to contend with in order to win the first outright SEC championship in 41 years. Let’s all be honest here, Tennessee will be favored to win the remainder of their games, and if they lose in the last four games, however realistic a possibility that may be, it would be considered a huge upset. The reality of the situation is that from here on out, Tennessee will be a favorite in every game they play and it will be interesting to see how the team reacts to being the king of the hill.Of course, the reason the BasketVols have found themselves in this enviable position is that they went on the road and defeated the then #1 team in the country in Memphis in a positively electric atmosphere at the FedEx Forum. As with any win, there are positives as well as negatives to be taken from the game. As for the negatives, the lack of a consistent half-court offense as well as mediocre shooting from the perimeter, but enough with negatives. Who likes negatives?

Positives include the ability to win in a hostile environment into front of people wearing bad Priscilla Presley masks (what’s that? that was actually Priscilla Presley? eww… I mean, hot!), the ability to adjust defense to stop the vaunted dribble drive motion offense, and the ability to put a game away from the free throw line. The last point might not seem like a big deal to an outsider, but followers of the Tennessee program realize that charity stripe shooting has been the fly in our ointment this season. It was refreshing to be able to see the players step up when it counted (perhaps they listened to Digger Phelps’ pep talk before the game while Calipari was busy hamming it up for the cameras on Gameday).

This win will hopefully help out come tournament time as every game turns into a “must win” type game, and having the experience of winning at Memphis should help with the team’s confidence in knowing that they’ve been to the big stage and have taken care of business.

So, up next is Vanderbilt, and the next step towards winning the SEC regular season Championship outright as well as hopefully the next step towards even bigger and better things.

Go Vols.

So, I was given the privilege of writing a guest post for Rocky Top Talk as Joel will be out of town this week.  First off, I’d like to thank Joel for asking me to help out, and hopefully opening up my awesome super sarcastic writing style to a few folks who might not have been exposed to it otherwise.

Anyway, if you guys want, go check out the post here, and leave some nice comments so that I don’t look so bad.