Random thoughts on former coaches thread.....

[Thunder Good-Oil]

We have had two good coaches since Mears. Pearl and Barnes. I am a big fan of both. Barnes is my favorite because he currently coaches my team. It's that simple.

Devoe was a very good, but not great, coach. KO had potential but might have needed to be on better meds. Jerry Green had a really good W/L record but underperformed with tge talent Kai left for him. Buzz and Wade were bad. Cuonzo was boring and was horrible at PR.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

Tennessee and Oklahoma were the last two D-1 schools to have both the school name AND the nickname on their jerseys. “Oklahoma Sooners” and “Tennessee Volunteers” were grandfathered. Kevin O’Neill, in one of his ****head moves, removed “Volunteers” from the jerseys. The rules were just recently changed to allow both again.

That's a really weird rule. Is there some reasoning why having both on the jersey is a problem. I really don't get why the NCAA is so weird with uniforms. It took them forever to allow football teams to wear white at home if they wanted, all based on a rule created for black and white TVs and even then until recently I think the road team had to agree to it (maybe still have to). And then for both teams to wear colored uniforms the home team has to agree. To me if the colored jersey is contrast enough then the road team should just wear what they want. Heck Tennessee could probably get away with wearing their orange jerseys for every game.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

He filled the role as a thug quite well. Couldn’t make a free throw though which was kind of weird for a coach’s boy. He certainly stole minutes from far more talented players.

He improved a lot. But at one point I remember commenting on a game thread here that one of his shots reminded me of Michael Scott's shooting on the basketball game episode of The Office. I thought he was going to break the backboard on one.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

Ed Gray and Stevie Hamer were in that squad. Lamarcus Golden was an under appreciated player as well. That team should've easily had 6-7 wins that year.

I remember during the 1994 UT Vandy football game I saw Hamer hanging out at a tailgate near the Parthenon before the game. He was hard to miss. I walked by and yelled " HAMER TIME!" and he gave me a high five.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

That's a really weird rule. Is there some reasoning why having both on the jersey is a problem. I really don't get why the NCAA is so weird with uniforms. It took them forever to allow football teams to wear white at home if they wanted, all based on a rule created for black and white TVs and even then until recently I think the road team had to agree to it (maybe still have to). And then for both teams to wear colored uniforms the home team has to agree. To me if the colored jersey is contrast enough then the road team should just wear what they want. Heck Tennessee could probably get away with wearing their orange jerseys for every game.

No idea why they had that rule. Maybe before HDTV it was too cluttered to easily read.

Regarding football whites, I think that the 1969 Cotton Bowl was the first time that TN wore white jerseys (at least in the modern era). TN and Texas both with orange and white and looked the same on TV.

 

[PandamoniumReigns]

I remember during the 1994 UT Vandy football game I saw Hamer hanging out at a tailgate near the Parthenon before the game. He was hard to miss. I walked by and yelled " HAMER TIME!" and he gave me a high five.

That would have been an awesome PR idea. If Hamer was more popular in Volunteer lore, I could see that as a shirt idea or something. On a night to honor Stevie or something

 

[ColinS]

Devoe was a very good, but not great, coach. KO had potential but might have needed to be on better meds. Jerry Green had a really good W/L record but underperformed with tge talent Kai left for him. Buzz and Wade were bad. Cuonzo was boring and was horrible at PR.

Devoe took over a program in position to win big and was average at best. During those early days of cable tv college basketball was very popular and a lot of schools built up their brand. The opportunity cost of hiring Devoe was steep. Boring average basketball is what it was.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Devoe took over a program in position to win big and was average at best. During those early days of cable tv college basketball was very popular and a lot of schools built up their brand. The opportunity cost of hiring Devoe was steep. Boring average basketball is what it was.

Devoe’s 1982 SEC championship was with his own players. His 1979 SEC Tournament championship came off of a very bad season and is still the only one in the modern era. He brought Dale Ellis and Dyron Nix and Tony White to TN. The SEC had some very good teams in the 1980s that he faced.

Devoe had 8 Patriot League championships at Navy. He has Tennessee’s first NCAAT win and the first Sweet 16. He won over a hundred more than he lost. Devoe is a borderline Hall of Fame coach.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Devoe was also hurt by the delays in completing the TBA. He had the program rolling and had the arena not been delayed by several years he would have potentially had the momentum to push TN to the elite level. The TBA was built to be the largest on campus arena in the country. Imagine if Tony White had been showcased in that venue. There was nothing boring about Tony White.

 

[The Dog]

Devoe was also hurt by the delays in completing the TBA. He had the program rolling and had the arena not been delayed by several years he would have potentially had the momentum to push TN to the elite level. The TBA was built to be the largest on campus arena in the country. Imagine if Tony White had been showcased in that venue. There was nothing boring about Tony White.

Tony White will always be my favorite basketball Vol, that I saw play, which started with Reggie Johnson's senior year. I went to a one day basketball clinic ran by DeVoe, while he was coaching UT, 1980 (I was 9) if I had to guess. DeVoe was from the Bobby Knight, coaching tree and was a hard a$$ coach in that mode.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

That would have been an awesome PR idea. If Hamer was more popular in Volunteer lore, I could see that as a shirt idea or something. On a night to honor Stevie or something

I think thanks to the Pearl era and now Barnes era and him doing color commentary for some of the games on SECN+, there's been a bit of retro-appreciation for him and other post-Allan Houston/pre-Pearl Vols. Him, Vincent Yarbrough, Ron Slay (who already was pretty fondly remembered), guys like that who were good players on not the best teams are getting more love.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

No idea why they had that rule. Maybe before HDTV it was too cluttered to easily read.

Regarding football whites, I think that the 1969 Cotton Bowl was the first time that TN wore white jerseys (at least in the modern era). TN and Texas both with orange and white and looked the same on TV.

Yeah Texas vs. Tennessee definitely makes sense one has to wear white. I can't find it now but I could have sworn I saw a picture of a UT/Vandy game from back then where Vandy had those yellowish gold jerseys and UT had their oranges on. That looked pretty confusing just from the pic, though Vandy I think did have black helmets at least.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Tony White will always be my favorite basketball Vol, that I saw play, which started with Reggie Johnson's senior year. I went to a one day basketball clinic ran by DeVoe, while he was coaching UT, 1980 (I was 9) if I had to guess. DeVoe was from the Bobby Knight, coaching tree and was a hard a$$ coach in that mode.

Devoe played with Knight, John Havlicek, and Jerry Lucas at Ohio State. He was on an NCAAT runner up team. He was a assistant under Bobby Knight at Army and coached Mike Krzyzewski there. Knight was the best coach in the country in the middle to late 1970s.

The game changed drastically while Devoe was at TN but he didn’t. The 2 biggest rule changes in about the last 75 years occurred while he was here. He was a disciplinarian and players were no longer buying into that style. His recruiting tailed off. Navy was a perfect fit for him. I also think that he was a very honest coach, so he lost ground competing with the surge of cheating coaches. He won over 500 games and 11 championships. Anybody calling him average is ignorant of the facts. He also maintained the Stokely Curse that Kentucky faced over the last 15-20 years of the SAC as TN’s home court.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I think thanks to the Pearl era and now Barnes era and him doing color commentary for some of the games on SECN+, there's been a bit of retro-appreciation for him and other post-Allan Houston/pre-Pearl Vols. Him, Vincent Yarbrough, Ron Slay (who already was pretty fondly remembered), guys like that who were good players on not the best teams are getting more love.

Allan Houston is the poster child of that. One of TN’s greatest players and he played in one of their worst ever eras.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Yeah Texas vs. Tennessee definitely makes sense one has to wear white. I can't find it now but I could have sworn I saw a picture of a UT/Vandy game from back then where Vandy had those yellowish gold jerseys and UT had their oranges on. That looked pretty confusing just from the pic, though Vandy I think did have black helmets at least.

The NCAA also won’t allow TN to regularly use the retro away jerseys with the orange shoulders from the Holloway era. I think that TN had to get an exemption to wear them for that one game when Ainge was the QB (Brent Schaefer might have still been active for that game as well... he might have even started).

 

[VolsSportsFan]

Wade Houston sucked.

I was in attendance for one of the 5 wins of his infamous 5-22 season.

I was in my early teens when Houston was coach, and yeah they sucked. But for me I still have great memories of watching some of his teams somehow upset UK in TBA. And that 1991 SECT run was pretty magical. That was one of the first SECTs I remember really paying attention to.

Tennessee sucked then but somehow it still felt like to me it mattered. And that's when Vandy basketball was still decent and playing at Memorial was almost an automatic L for everyone. One of the reasons I hate that place so much is I remember going to a UT/Vandy game and back then the Vandy fans outnumbered UT fans.....at the basketball games at least. To this day some of the worst behavior I've ever had hurled at me was from Vandy fans that night. We got tickets from a family friend who had Vandy season tickets and was out of town and the Vandy fans around us treated us terribly. Vandy won a close one but you would have thought the way they taunted us Vandy won by 50. Me cheering UT making a dunk had a grown woman screaming at me to sit down and on one UT run we cheered when Vandy had to call TO and I swear one guy tried to get the usher to have us removed for "taunting" and claimed we were cursing. Luckily one Vandy guy who knew the guy whose tickets we had spoke up and said we were fine. And again....I was barely 12/13 then, a kid. I was half scared they were going to beat us.

That's why I will always root against Vandy in everything. I've been around Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Georgia, Notre Dame, Miami, and various NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA fans.....NONE in my life have ever been as bad as the Vandy fans in Memorial Gym from back in the day.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I was in my early teens when Houston was coach, and yeah they sucked. But for me I still have great memories of watching some of his teams somehow upset UK in TBA. And that 1991 SECT run was pretty magical. That was one of the first SECTs I remember really paying attention to.

Tennessee sucked then but somehow it still felt like to me it mattered. And that's when Vandy basketball was still decent and playing at Memorial was almost an automatic L for everyone. One of the reasons I hate that place so much is I remember going to a UT/Vandy game and back then the Vandy fans outnumbered UT fans.....at the basketball games at least. To this day some of the worst behavior I've ever had hurled at me was from Vandy fans that night. We got tickets from a family friend who had Vandy season tickets and was out of town and the Vandy fans around us treated us terribly. Vandy won a close one but you would have thought the way they taunted us Vandy won by 50. Me cheering UT making a dunk had a grown woman screaming at me to sit down and on one UT run we cheered when Vandy had to call TO and I swear one guy tried to get the usher to have us removed for "taunting" and claimed we were cursing. Luckily one Vandy guy who knew the guy whose tickets we had spoke up and said we were fine. And again....I was barely 12/13 then, a kid. I was half scared they were going to beat us.

That's why I will always root against Vandy in everything. I've been around Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Georgia, Notre Dame, Miami, and various NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA fans.....NONE in my life have ever been as bad as the Vandy fans in Memorial Gym from back in the day.

Vandy fans were the worst offenders of throwing oranges at players before that behavior was under control. I can’t imagine fans ever being allowed to get away with making debris rain down on players. The TN players used to throw them back at the student section.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

Vandy fans were the worst offenders of throwing oranges at players before that behavior was under control. I can’t imagine fans ever being allowed to get away with making debris rain down on players. The TN players used to throw them back at the student section.

I barely remember it but the Dwayne Schintzius tennis ball incident comes to mind.

 

[PandamoniumReigns]

I barely remember it but the Dwayne Schintzius tennis ball incident comes to mind.

Schintzius had the hair of Fabio. That's all I remember of that guy.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Schintzius had the hair of Fabio. That's all I remember of that guy.

Dwayne’s was much more mullet than Fabio. Close to Vanilla Ice but more mulletitious,

 

[ColinS]

Devoe’s 1982 SEC championship was with his own players. His 1979 SEC Tournament championship came off of a very bad season and is still the only one in the modern era. He brought Dale Ellis and Dyron Nix and Tony White to TN. The SEC had some very good teams in the 1980s that he faced.

Devoe had 8 Patriot League championships at Navy. He has Tennessee’s first NCAAT win and the first Sweet 16. He won over a hundred more than he lost. Devoe is a borderline Hall of Fame coach.

Devoe wasn't horrible and got off to a good start but fizzled in his last 5 or 6 years. He was much better at Navy. He lacked vision. When the three point line came out, he bragged that he told his players to ignore it. You are gonna tell Tony White to ignore the three point line??? No wonder he fizzled out.

 

[onthehill71]

Devoe wasn't horrible and got off to a good start but fizzled in his last 5 or 6 years. He was much better at Navy. He lacked vision. When the three point line came out, he bragged that he told his players to ignore it. You are gonna tell Tony White to ignore the three point line??? No wonder he fizzled out.

Bobby Knight was furious when Devoe was let go. Really bad mouthed us over the dismissal.

 

[jasonvols2.2]

What if Barnes dis go to UCLA? Heard that Mick Cronnan was a top target, and he would have taken the job

 

[C/O]

OP, Steven Pearl was actually a pretty solid defensive player form what I remember lol

Reported.

 

[i2amavol]

He was terrible at first and had no business out there but he actually developed into a decent player.

I never understood the hate. He was not very athletic, but he knew what to do, and played hard. It's not like he played a ton.