Wake Up, Things are Happening with Tennessee Sports

by Joel Hollingsworth on Feb 27, 2012 8:11 AM EST in Rocky Top Talking Points

Rays of Sunshine? Are you paying attention, or have you been lulled to sleep? Because things are beginning to look up for Tennessee sports. How good did you expect Tennessee basketball to be this season? Well, how about as good as last year in the SEC with two games still remaining and having won six of their last seven? The team has found something that works, and it's not just the addition of Jarnell Stokes. Sure, Stokes contributed his adrenaline early and is finding his role late, but mostly it's about team defense, emphasis on "team." And on a related note, Tennessee baseball under new head coach Dave Serrano is 7-0 to begin the season for just the second time in school history. Good things are still on the table for Tennessee teams this year, so out of bed sleepy head.

Etceteras. The one year show cause penalties for some of last year's basketball staff are drawing to a close. What is Steve Forbes up to? Hint: It involves taking a scooter to work. . . . So southern gentleman Tee Martin is headed off to the big city. Don't blame Lane, blame Layla. . . . Yahoo! has an SEC spring preview that includes the surprising fact that LSU starts spring practice tomorrow. . . . Florida started its game with Georgia two points in the hole thanks to an egregiously offensive, insulting, dangerous-to-society and your mother pre-game incident. That's right, somebody dunked in the pre-game layup line. The horror. Seriously, what societal evil are we trying to regulate out of existence with that jewel?

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I know we don't have the most glorious baseball history...

But we’ve had some damned good teams. I’m really surprised that we have only started 7-0 once before now.

Lou Brock loves Lamp.

by birdjam on Feb 27, 2012 8:38 AM EST reply actions

No dunking in the layup line

is the biggest “get off my lawn” call of all-time

Rocky Top Talk

by Will Shelton on Feb 27, 2012 9:05 AM EST reply actions

I've never heard of the "No dunking in the layup line" rule before.

It’s strange I’ve seen so many games where a player has dunked in the warmup.

by Ben Miller on Feb 27, 2012 1:09 PM EST reply actions

I know it was a rule in high school

this is the first I’d heard of it in college

If I cared more about my UNC side, I'd call myself "Tar Volon," and that'd be awesome.
Bolts, Canes, Preds (now in different conferences!). Canes mini-STH. Southern hockey solidarity
Rocky Top Talk

by Incipient_Senescence on Feb 27, 2012 1:29 PM EST up reply actions

Okay

We didn’t have to worry about kids dunking in my high school, our team was a bunch of short white guys, so that explains why I had never heard of it.

by Ben Miller on Feb 27, 2012 3:32 PM EST up reply actions

we periodically played opponents who we hoped would give us technical FTs

If I cared more about my UNC side, I'd call myself "Tar Volon," and that'd be awesome.
Bolts, Canes, Preds (now in different conferences!). Canes mini-STH. Southern hockey solidarity
Rocky Top Talk

by Incipient_Senescence on Feb 27, 2012 5:00 PM EST up reply actions

It happened to us three or four years ago.....

another plumb moment of the Billy Clyde era……

I am now and shall forever be the Cat in The Hat, The Artist Formerly Known As ABC!!!

by Greg Alan Edwards on Feb 28, 2012 8:28 AM EST up reply actions

it's a dumb rule.....lol

I am now and shall forever be the Cat in The Hat, The Artist Formerly Known As ABC!!!

by Greg Alan Edwards on Feb 28, 2012 8:29 AM EST up reply actions

A friend of mine who was in high school in the late 70s in Florida

told me of a game his high school team played against another team. The opponent had a guy (I can’t remember his name) who went on to have a good NBA career as a center. Off the opening tip, they fed it to him and he jammed it in with both hands. At the time, it was illegal to dunk in high school, so they called a technical, but it didn’t really matter. Once they saw the dunk, my friend’s team was beaten.

Completely tangential, I know, but it’s my one dunk story worth telling. I just with I could remember the player’s name.

by David Hooper on Feb 28, 2012 8:49 AM EST up reply actions

It has happened before

I remember watching this game. It was surreal. I’ve made the call as an official before. It totally is a “THIS IS MY HOUSE” call to make.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/St-Mary-s-receives-technical-for-dunking-in-pre?urn=ncaab,147054

by TheN8tureBoy on Feb 27, 2012 9:30 PM EST up reply actions

I told you Florida was a bunch of thugs...

next thing you know, they’ll want to vote.

by Caban on Feb 27, 2012 1:52 PM EST reply actions

It has been a rule

But it’s been a rule that officials have largely ignored, and clearly rightfully so. Generally there seems to have been an unwritten rule that if the players kind of refrain from doing it while the officials are out on the court, the officials will pretend they didn’t see the odd one here or there.

I don’t know which douchebag official decided that he had to break the unwritten rule and call it, but my money is on either Ted Valentine or Doug Shows (the guy who gave Mark Fox an instant double technical with like 10 seconds left in our home game with Georgia a couple weeks ago, and also gave Anthony Davis a T for hanging on the rim the other night in Starkville when he would’ve broken his neck if he’d let go).

by nirwin on Feb 27, 2012 2:21 PM EST reply actions

Don't know which one called it....

but the officials for that game were Gary Maxwell, Pat Adams, and Doug Sirmons.

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone." A. Bartlett Giamatti

Follow @DawnBake

by sddbaker on Feb 27, 2012 5:19 PM EST up reply actions

You can’t have a bunch of dudes tearing the rims to pieces before the game. That’s what the rule is for.

by TheN8tureBoy on Feb 27, 2012 9:30 PM EST up reply actions

easy...

Just make it a technical at the referee’s discretion if the players are being idiots and hanging on the rim unnecessarily or doing nothing but dunking. Or the players should at a minimum be getting a warning from the referees before having a technical foul assessed.

by Caban on Feb 27, 2012 9:58 PM EST up reply actions

but, but, but we're now a zero tolerance society

which also means zero applied intelligence/judgement

by phil g on Feb 28, 2012 11:22 AM EST up reply actions

it is funny...

how nobody trusts others to be competent.

There’s been sociological/psychology study after study trying to figure out why humans do that despite the overwhelming evidence being that our relatively well-oiled society requires the vast majority of folks to be quite competent at what they do.

by Caban on Feb 28, 2012 2:02 PM EST up reply actions