Basketball Vols Go Half Way Around the World to Get to Duke

The basketball Vols have completed their 18-hour travel day to Hawaii for the Maui Invitational. While Kenny Hall was busy snapping pictures of a sleeping assistant coach, which is just mean, Kenny, and I want to see the picture, Cuonzo Martin had the somewhat surprising early season production of Skylar McBee, Trae Golden, and Jeronne Maymon to ponder. McBee's been hitting threes like everyone's always wanted him to, Golden's been racking up assists, and Maymon's recorded a double double already.  The Vols play the Duke You-May-Have-Heard-Of-Them Blue Devils Monday at 5:30 p.m. ET.

Experiment. Read this article suggesting that Vanderbilt has outplayed Tennessee against common opponents and see if you can make it past the Florida comparison. Failure to mention the loss of Justin Hunter in the Gator game renders all subsequent conclusions invalid for lack of research.

John Adams busts out the rare Double Edged Troll Sword.

We knew punting was all kinds of bad against Arkansas, but the TFP boils it down to just the bitter: "Matt Darr had one punt returned for a touchdown and Michael Palardy's two punts went 12 and 27 yards." To his credit Erik Russell plans no change to the scheme:

"You're never going to get more guys around a ball-carrier," Russell said. "Wish I had a better answer. I could say we're going to run this or do that, but no. Do what you do and do it better."

That, of course, means tackling better:

"It wasn't just arm tackles or we're just getting glances on him," Russell said. "We full-out had chances to hit, wrap and we bounced right off him. It goes to pure fundamentals and want."

I keep seeing this play on the TVs in my store, and the combination of the Charter cable customer service line and the hosts calling it the play of the year in college football is endangering the health of my flat panels.

Jim Chaney says that the pressure on Jim Chaney comes from Jim Chaney:

"I feel bad about that. All I know to do is to go back to work and keep working on it. Pressure? I don't feel like anyone's saying, 'Hey, if you don't score 40 points this week, I'm going to fire you or I'm going to shoot you.'"

Yeah, it's not like he works in Gainesville.

Vanderbilt plans to pressure Tyler Bray on every pass, which we're hoping is every offensive play. On the other hand, I would love almost nothing more than seeing Tauren Poole write a happy ending for a tumultuous Tennessee career.