The Tennessee Volunteers play the Arkansas Razorbacks in the first round of the SEC Basketball Tournament tonight at 7:30. It's a rematch of the Vols' first SEC game, which also happened to be its first of eight SEC losses. Brian Williams, who Bruce Pearl expects to play, although not as many minutes as he was playing before his back injury, says the loss to the Hogs earlier this season was "one of the worst games we played, collectively." Defense was a huge problem in that game, and could be again, although Pearl says the team is doing well on defense for about 35 minutes per game but tends to have frustrating lapses at the "start-of-the-half" and late in the game.
Will's got RTT's Tennessee-Arkansas preview at 8:00 this morning.
REMEMBERING TENNESSEE'S RUN TO THE ELITE EIGHT
Assistant basketball coach Mark Pancratz got goose bumps walking into the Georgia Dome yesterday. Why? It gave him flashbacks of beating Ohio State last year to advance to the Elite Eight. Think back on that long enough, and you'll get 'em, too. Somebody needs to go find and post that video of the locker room celebration. That thing's got goosebump parameters in the embed code.
MORE PRAISE FOR SCOTTY HOPSON
Congratulations to Scotty Hopson, who earned second-team All-District 21 honors from the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
BRENT VINSON PERSEVERING
Former Vol Brent Vinson is again picking himself up, dusting himself off, and trying to leverage football into a better life. (No, not at Tennessee.) Best of luck to him.