THE SHOOT: EPISODE 8
"Many Things Are Making Me Mad"
--Seth Stogsdill
The views I’m about to express are my own, but as you’ll see, that may also be yours. It’s been three weeks since I’ve done a Shoot, and in that time, many things have made me angry. I could do a Shoot on any one of those things and people, but I think I’ll just condense it to one giant ball of rage. Let’s begin, shall we?
JAY BILAS
Let’s go ahead and get this out in the open. Jay Bilas is the best college basketball analyst on television today. He has held this title for about three years, and I don’t see him giving it up anytime soon. In fact, I hope that since he’s been doing NCAA Tournament games on CBS the past couple years, he might be groomed to replace Billy Packer on the network’s Final Four broadcasts. The love ends there in this column, though. Jay Bilas has gone from my favorite ESPN basketball personality to the one that annoys me the most because of his stances on Kentucky this season. Ever since the Cats beat Tennessee in January, every episode of College Gameday has featured a segment where the analysts are asked whether or not Kentucky is going to make the NCAA Tournament. Every single time this question has been asked, Jay Bilas has been firmly in the “no” camp. This would be understandable if the evidence kept mounting in support of Jay’s stance, but the exact opposite has happened. Kentucky has won eight of nine games starting with that Tennessee game, and they are currently a half game ahead of Vanderbilt for the E2 seed in the SEC Tournament. In theory, Kentucky still controls its destiny in the SEC because they have one more game against Tennessee, and can win the conference outright by winning out in the regular season.
During the three-week hiatus of the Shoot, I managed to do a little research using one of the coolest websites on the internet, shrpsports.com. The site has conference standings and season info for every major D-I team since 1996. In this little project, I took a look at the six “BCS” conferences – ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, SEC – and the conference standings of each team. The results were fascinating. No team that plays a 16-game conference (Pac-10 plays 18 games) schedule has won 11 conference games and missed the NCAA Tournament except Georgia in 2003, and that happened because the school imposed a postseason ban on itself due to the Jim Harrick scandal. In the past 12 seasons, you could count the number of teams who went 10-6 in conference play and missed the tournament on one hand. The deck is still stacked against Kentucky, but I have said since the Tennessee game that the magic number for Kentucky to get into the Dance is 12-4. I don’t know if Jay Bilas understands this, because he is being irrationally stubborn in this argument. The hated Digger Phelps (the guy who picked Kentucky to lose to Syracuse in 1996 and picked Kentucky to lose EACH of their 1998 Tournament games) said on the morning of the Florida game that Kentucky was his biggest disappointment of the year. Fast forward a month and now Digger is the top UK backer on ESPN and the only person on College Gameday who believes that Kentucky can get into the NCAA Tournament without winning the SEC Tournament. Phelps noticed a change in Kentucky’s play that I’m not sure Bilas has acknowledged. Jay is one of the rapidly decreasing number of people who don’t complete understand this transformation. He needs to read this fantastic article by Will Graves. Jay, you’re still the man, but you need to get with the program on this one. The Big Blue is charging, and potential 5-8 seeds are defecating themselves at the thought of having to play this team in the first round.
KENTUCKY FANS WHO ARE ACTUALLY TENNESSEE FANS
I know some Tennessee fans that are good people and can carry on an intelligent sports conversation. If any of those guys are reading this, my beef is not with you. My problem lies with two categories of Tennessee fans, and both claim to be Kentucky fans: The Chris Lofton fan and the Bruce Pearl fan. I want to start with the Lofton crowd because Chris graduates this year, and this might be my last chance to rip them a new one, so here goes. Kentucky fans hate it that Chris Lofton plays for Tennessee, so much so that some of them have defied Lofton. In the Kentucky Korner store in Fayette Mall, there is a small section of Tennessee apparel, including #5 jerseys. Imagine an Alabama section in the middle of an Auburn-exclusive store. It’s ridiculous, am I right? Most of these people come from Mason County, where Lofton won a state championship and the coveted Kentucky Mr. Basketball award. Mason County residents love Lofton so much that, after his sophomore year, they painted the town Tennessee Vomit Orange and named Coach Bruce Pearl an honorary Kentucky Colonel. I know of nothing that has ever or will ever upset me like this did. Bruce Pearl didn’t even recruit Lofton. Buzz Peterson recruited him, then was fired after the 2005 season. Pearl cashed in on good recruiting by Peterson, brought the full court press to the SEC for the first time since 40 Minutes of Hell, and Tennessee is currently the #1 team in the country until the new polls come out. Buzz Peterson should have been named an honorary Kentucky Colonel. I’m from Lincoln County, and I can’t fathom somebody from my high school making me change teams because he committed to Tennessee and Kentucky didn’t recruit him instead of Rajon Rondo (starter for best team in NBA), Ramel Bradley (1000-point scorer, rejuvenated player under Coach Gillispie) or Joe Crawford (ditto). Coach Gillispie did a great job winning Mason County back by snagging a commitment from Darius Miller, but if Mason County wanted to become the Mason County Orangemen instead of the Mason County Royals and secede from the state while Lofton was a Volunteer, it wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest.
The Bruce Pearl fans are the ones that grind my gears like no other. I don’t mind Bruce Pearl personally. I think he’s a good (but not great) coach, a great recruiter, and a perfect ambassador for a program like Tennessee that was a sleeping giant for about 25 years. Seriously, the talent in the state of Tennessee is incredible and always has been. Also, he provided the strategy for any coach who wants to fondle Erin Andrews during a halftime interview. However, I can’t stand the people who constantly suck up to Bruce Pearl at the expense of making my team’s coach look bad. These people are not just an internet phenomenon. Kentucky fans love them some Bruce Pearl. The main reason is the style of play his teams utilize. For whatever reason, it draws comparisons to the style Kentucky used during its run in the 90s, and this could not be farther from the truth. The only common ground is the full court press. That’s it. Kentucky could run up and down the court like gazelles, but they could also execute when the defense stopped the transition opportunities. The backdoor lob was the play of choice, and all five guys on the team could pass, which set up the open looks from three, which all five guys could hit. There will never be another team in college basketball like 1996 Kentucky, with eight NBA players on the roster and a coach in the absolute prime of his career.
Now look at Tennessee and why they lost to Vanderbilt last night. Shot selection was terrible. Lofton takes horrible shots all the time, but he can get away with that since he makes a good deal of those. Jajuan “Chuck” Smith takes similar shots with next to no consequence, even though he isn’t a better shooter than Lofton – big mistake. During the final five minutes, Tennessee went into panic mode on offense, in which they took it to the rack every time, in the hopes of making a layup or drawing a foul. Sometimes it worked, but other times a Smith dribbled right into a triple team and hoisted up a shot that lad about a 3% chance of going in. They missed their free throws in the most clutch situations. On defense, the Kentucky teams of the 90s had the most effective press I’ve ever seen. Remember the LSU game with the 86-point first half? LSU couldn’t even inbound the ball. Tennessee’s press is good, but they gamble way too much in their halfcourt defense to be taken seriously as a national championship contender. Vanderbilt was able to expand their second half lead by taking advantage of failed Tennessee gambles for steals and moving the ball around the court to an open shooter before the Tennessee players could recover. In my opinion, these problems can all be remedied with better coaching. I’m all for a coach giving his players some free reign, but it needs to be under a little more control before I start giving Bruce Pearl praise for being this pantheon coach that other people say he is. After all, didn’t Kentucky’s own Billy Gillispie completely outcoach Pearl in the first meeting between Kentucky and Tennessee? That Tennessee team had no business losing to that Kentucky team on paper, but Coach Gillispie became the first coach to successfully dictate the tempo against Tennessee, and I’m sure this is what will try to happen on Sunday. This column is running a little long, so I’ll try to work in my thoughts on CBS switching games before the Arkansas game ended in my next shoot. If I did it now, I’d spontaneously combust.
I’m Seth Stogsdill, and I might have problems. That was a lot of anger.
