Last March, Bruce Pearl was on top of the coaching world. He had taken his Tennessee Volunteers within one point of the Final Four as a six-seed which was the culmination of one of the most impressive coaching jobs in recent memory.

Pearl’s 2009-10 team was incredibly talented, and expected to contend for the SEC title with seniors Tyler Smith and Wayne Chism leading the way. Things were going along just fine for the 14th-ranked Vols until everything changed on Jan. 1. Read More »

While most of the summer has been focused on the NBA, college basketball will be starting up again in a few weeks. As a basketball team manager at Vanderbilt, the SEC is my specialty, and while Kentucky is loaded with All-American freshmen again, experience still counts in this league. Here are the returning players most important to their team’s success this season: Read More »

We know which teams have the money, and we know which players they want. The only intrigue left before LeBron, D-Wade, Amar’e, Bosh, Joe and the rest actually put pen to paper is how they’ll be recruited. LeBron’s camp has already said they’re not going on a cross-country tour, that they’ll meet with teams at a “neutral site.” (Not that anyone will complain: The Knicks would swim through 500 yards of sh*t-smelling foulness to get LeBron.) … As for D-Wade and Bosh, reports yesterday said they will travel to New York to visit with the Knicks. Meanwhile, LeBron is going to hear pitches from the Cavs, Nets, Heat, Bulls, Clippers and Knicks. Read More »

If Tom Izzo really does have an underground Lord of the Rings-style factory where he builds his Michigan State army from scratch, he wasn’t even being creative when he made Korie Lucious as the eventual successor to Kalin Lucas. Similar name, similar game, and if you saw the spin move and floater that Lucious (10 pts, 6 asts, 4 stls) hit last night to stick the dagger in Northern Iowa and send the Spartans to yet another Elite Eight, you couldn’t help but remember Lucas’ similar shot that iced Kansas in the tourney last year … Read More »

As a former high school All-American with an NBA body and Lottery-pick potential, Scotty Hopson was supposed to be Tennessee’s top scorer and take on a leadership role. Next year.

But when UT head coach Bruce Pearl dismissed All-SEC senior wing Tyler Smith from the team in January following Smith’s arrest on misdemeanor gun and drug charges — an incident from which three other players were suspended — Hopson had to step up. Two days after Smith was dismissed, the sophomore scored 17 points to lead the Volunteers in an upset win over No. 1-ranked Kansas. Read More »

That’s right, the start of the college hoops season is just one week away and you know what that means: it’s time to unleash the mother effing fury! For the past seven months, I’ve been bottling up a vicious mixture of excitement and rage, just waiting for the moment to release my emotions onto the rest of the world. Well that time has come. Your boy Matty D is back to give you a look at the top teams in the country and to separate the champs from the chumps. Read More »