Tennessee Volunteers 80, Marquette Golden Eagles 68: post-game recap brought to you by generic Nyquil

Fifteen minutes ago, the Tennessee Volunteers completed their 80-68 victory over the Marquette Golden Eagles. Fifteen seconds ago, I swallowed a full dose of generic Nyquil and decided to write the post-game wrap up anyway. The race is on. See? This is why I'm more fun than Mike Griffith.

So yeah, I'm sick. Wicked, nasty sore throat stuffy head fever can't get no real rest sick. You know who else is sick? Wayne Chism. Sick in that way you youngins use those bad words as opposites to describe something good like Adam Sandler in Mr. Deeds. Yeah, like that.

Wayne Chism was a wicked sick monster. Dude had a career high 26 points on 8-11 shooting (2-5 three-pointers) and 8-11 free throws. That doesn't look right. Is it the syrupy green stuff? I don't know, and funny, I don't care. Wheezy also had 10 rebounds and was an absolute joy to watch as he had several emotional outbursts that rivaled Bruce Pearl's. Remember that? That was cool.

Tennessee got off to a rocky start, looking more like they did against Temple than they did against Georgetown, and Marquette took the early lead. The game then was nice and close until midway through the second half when Tennessee began to pull away. Helpful chart from which I derived this information. Seven minutes, and I can still use the word "derive" appropriately.

While Wheezy was the star, he certainly had some help. Tyler Smith and Bobby Maze each contributed 12 points to the Vols' total of 80, and six other players scored. While the Vols often looked timid and apprehensive on offense, they looked much more energetic on defense, and that defense triggered some brief glimpses of the Tennessee teams of yore. You know, like last year and the year before. Heh, I ryhmed. Teams with players thriving on chaos, tipping balls, sprinting to the other end with defenders on their heels, making the extra pass, a guy dunking, setting up the crowd-favorite OOBTO (out of bounds turnovers, for you folks new to Rocky Top Talk). We didn't see it a lot tonight, but we did see it a bit, enough to make us think that we will rediscover ourselves soon enough.

Poppies.

Marquette is a very good team with some NBA talent, as Jimmy Dykes' helpful NBA Scouting Tool (TM) proved to us during the game. We played a good game against them. So yeah, it was a good game.

Did you know that Google's GMail has a very helpful Goggles feature? If you enable it, it turns itself on late at night and makes you do math before allowing you to send email on the premise that you may be impaired and in a frame of mindlessness to send an email you may later regret. Unfortunately, they don't have one for blogs and this whole field is just completely filled with poppies. The old Wiz is just gonna have to wait man, 'cuzz I just want to lay down in this field of poppies and sleep my pretty sleep.

Don't shoot it, Wheezy! High-five!

popplies