At some point, the narrative is simple. Tennessee needs wins, and they need them now. It'll happen simply: defense and just enough offense to scrape by.

Some of it - a lot of it - is tempo, if I had to guess (I lack the KenPom subscription to be sure), but Tennessee has yet to allow 70 points in a single game this year. And by this year, I mean this actual year - the last team to top 70 was Charleston, and that was back in December. Why's that matter? South Carolina has struggled to score all season, and has only topped 70 once this year (again, 2012 only - 79 against Western Carolina, and that was over a month ago). The Gamecocks are currently mired in a 1-7 slump, not coincidentally their record in SEC play, and have one win on the road all year.

Yeah, one. And that came against Clemson, who fell back to orbit early this year instead of waiting until February to falter. Tennessee, meanwhile, has played far better at home than on the road, the game's in TBA, and it's at night.

I think we need to know what has to happen. There simply isn't room in the schedule and hope for post-season play to suffer a loss to South Carolina, especially at home, and Tennessee's done well against teams below them in the KenPom ratings so far this season (8-3, with those three losses coming in a two-week span that most of us are aware of and the Chaminade game thrown out because that's too easy). That point shouldn't be lost against a South Carolina team that should be overmatched - and a team who's giving up 30 spots in the KenPom ratings to the Vols.

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So: we won. Let's get that out of the way now. In the end, it was a relatively comfortable win, even by the standards of really comfortable wins. Are there areas that need to be worked on? Of course there are, not the least of which is the offensive line. I'm not so sure this game was entirely the O-line's fault, though.

We were absurdly vanilla, even for vanilla. It's not so much the individual plays called as much as it was formation variance, and what we were doing with those formations. I decided to broadly break down our run-pass balance by formation for the first part of the game (once we were up 28-0, the game was effectively decided, so I wasn't as concerned about that), and the results are below:

What does that mean? It means that, broadly speaking, we weren't doing much to use formations to confuse the defense. That's painting with broad strokes, sure, but if I was on Montana's defense, it'd be relatively easy to identify what we were doing based on two things:

- Is Channing Fugate in the game?

- Is Tyler Bray in shotgun?

Those two questions basically defined what we did against Montana. I don't expect that to continue.

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Well that didn't take long. Tennessee hired Dave Serrano less than a month ago, and the traditional honeymoon period has been cut short. I know there were message board discussions about it almost immediately, but now the news outlets are questioning his education as well.

Apparently, UT coaching gigs generally require a bachelor's degree. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps because it's a measure of devotion to the educational process? Sort of a paying your dues kind of thing? Anyway, the listing for the baseball job said a bachelor's was desired, but not required. You can make of that whatever you want. If it was written specifically with Serrano in mind, my response is so what.

In any event, Serrano has a bachelor's degree, but it's from The Trinity College and University, which is incorporated in Delaware and based out of Spain, and it rewards degrees for life experience, a euphemistic phrase that suggests that it's a diploma mill. Serrano says he's not trying to hide anything, but you may be asking yourself why he would get a mail-order bachelor's degree if that was truly the case. He got it because his prior employer asked him to get it. So there.

This whole thing is ridiculous. Higher education has this over-fascination with the education of its educators that completely misses the mark of what really matters in education. The question should be whether a professor can teach, not how far down the expert continuum he's managed to crawl. As the old saying goes, an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he eventually knows everything about nothing, and in my four years of undergraduate school and three years of graduate school, I've learned that the most highly educated individuals are often the absolute worst professors.

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. . . that you missed the Tennessee-American replay last night because you were digesting the whole Fulmer/subpoena thing. Luckily, it's on the ball even when you're not.

College Basketball Next episode: 2008 NCAA Tournament: American vs. Tennessee From March 21, 2008..   (Repeat)  View in TV Listings

Fri 7/25 6:00 AM CBSCS 2 hours No rating Sports, Basketball, Sports Non-Event

This year's College World Series features a rematch between the Oregon State Beavers and the North Carolina Tar Heels.

Corn Nation is your hub. Be sure to visit OSU blog Building the Dam and NC blog Carolina March for the teams' fans' perspective.

If you haven't heard by now, UT baseball coach Rod Delmonico was released Sunday after 17 years and 699 wins as a Vol. Gentry Estes of The Chattanooga Times-Free Press writes Delmonico's career obit nicely:

Most Vol baseball fans have had an opinion on Delmonico for some time now. Personally I've never been a big fan of the guy. I've felt sorry for players I think he misused (like R.A. Dickey, whose arm is now held together with duct tape), but mostly I've never felt like Tennessee baseball -- even in the good years -- was fun. And if you can't look forward to enjoying a day at the ballpark, something's wrong.

Anyway, the task of finding UT's next manager is now on Mike Hamilton. I'm sure the guy who brought us Bruce Pearl can handle it, but I'd like to offer a few names myself...

Morris Buttermaker Pros: Good recruiter (got Kelly Leak to play) Experienced pool cleaner, so in the offseason he could help out at the Aquatic Center Has an in with Chico's Bail Bonds, which could come in handy for the whole athletics department Cons: Raging alcoholic Willingness to provide alcohol to players during and after games might necessitate the Chico's Bail Bonds ties He's fictional
C. Montgomery Burns Pros: Won a championship as manager of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team Also a good recruiter, signing many top players in the process (though he did miss out on Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown) Could use multi-billion dollar worth to renovate Lindsey Nelson Stadium Cons: Aging (though seemingly not rapidly) at somewhere between 81-118 years old Unorthodox management style, such as benching Darryl Strawberry for Homer Simpson (though that did work out for him...) Also fictional. Also a cartoon.
Bruce Pearl Pros: Proven winner Everybody loves him Superhuman powers Cons: Already busy building championship program Would get really, really sweaty in a baseball uniform around May/June Though not fictional, also not a baseball coach

Those are just a few ideas to get started with. So Mike, if you need me on the search committee, you know where to find me.

Go Vols!

The Tennessee Smokies organization has ended its affiliation with the Arizona Diamondbacks and struck a two-year player development deal with the Chicago Cubs. Now would be a good time to check out the excellent SB Nation Cubs blog, Bleed Cubbie Blue.