Thursday's got a lot going on, man
- Morning! In your national-news story of the day, ESPN is reporting questions are now being asked about the legality of the "courtesy calls" made by Knoxville Police officials to coach Butch Jones early into the investigation of the alleged rape case involving former players AJ Johnson and Michael Williams. According to a statement issued by Assistant District Attorney Sean McDermott to The Tennessean,
"We cannot discuss the investigation of this case while the litigation is pending. [...] In any case, however, (Knox County District Attorney) General Allen opposes pre-arrest notification to any person or agency that is not made in furtherance of the investigation. A pre-arrest disclosure of sensitive information that is not made for the purpose of advancing the criminal investigation potentially could violate state law regarding the misuse of official information."
You can read the original Tennessean report here.
- In happier news, the WNBA draft is tonight (6EST, ESPN2), and here's a nice interview with Bashaara Graves talking about her plans for watching the draft, and her internship in Knoxville working with first-time kids who are in the juvenile justice system. Graves is currently projected to go 21st by DraftSite.
- Knoxville's own Jorden Bowden (G, Carter High School) committed to Tennessee and Rick Barnes Wednesday, making him the sixth member of this year's signing class. That class, incidentally, has creeped up to 35th in the Rivals national rankings.
- Florida defensive back Jalen Tabor got super mad on twitter over this:
ESPN's Preseason FPI predicts the 2016 SEC East champs will be ... @Vol_Football. pic.twitter.com/O2qNs0vCsT
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) April 13, 2016He deleted all his tweets, but 247 saved them for posterity over here, if you're into that sort of thing.
- In an interesting ESPN article titled Why Joshua Dobbs is SEC's most important player, Ed Aschoff goes though the usual aerospace-major/"taking it day-to-day"/"Dobbs has a really big vocabulary" motions, but also drops a few interesting quotes on Dobbs' development from a couple of unnamed non-Tennessee assistants:
"If they let him go play and trust him, to me, why would they not be the favorites in the East? Since he was a freshman, it seems as each year goes past, to me, it seems like he plays with handcuffs on, and I don’t know what that’s done for his confidence throwing the ball. I’ve seen him; I know he can throw the football."
Check out the full article for more. (Thanks to I_S for the link)
- Lastly, as a reminder, the Orange and White game is on Saturday, and Butch Jones has teased a super-duper-secret "special announcement at halftime" in both his press conferences this week. I have no idea what it's about, but literally every source covering it has plastered pictures of Peyton all over the article, so, um- take that how you want.
Happy Thursday!