I never glanced at King's stats until a couple weeks ago.
Has to be the best player to ever step on the court in orange and it's hard to even imagine a better.
Absolutely, unimaginably dominant.
I was shocked when I saw it and still am. Might be up for best college player all-time. Just didn't play on the best all-around team outside of Ernie. But objectively, he has to be up there individually.
Point guard was Johnny Darden - he distributed the ball well - helped both those guys alot.
From The Tennessean:
“…assists leader at UT with 715 and led the Vols in assists all four seasons he played in 1976-79. He averaged 6.3 points per game for his career, which was quite a comedown from his prolific scoring at Springfield High.
"Scoring wasn't a priority for me," he said. "In high school, I had to score. That was never an issue at UT because we had plenty of scorers. Coach (Ray) Mears never, ever told me not to shoot the basketball. That was my decision."
Darden handled the ball with flair and efficiency. Many of his 715 career assists came on no-look, behind-the-back passes. He dribbled through traffic with ease. Longtime SEC basketball broadcaster Joe Dean bestowed him with the nickname "Dirt Dauber."
Mears, the late Vols coaching icon, once said Darden had "a way of getting the ball to the right guy at the right time no matter what the defense was doing — and making it look easy."
Darden's UT career was a bit of a wild ride. As a freshman, he arrived at the height of the Ernie & Bernie Show, which was a magical time in Vols basketball history.
Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King, two New Yorkers, were All-Americans and future first-round NBA draft picks. Nashvillian Mike Jackson also was a double-figure scorer on those teams. Darden stepped right in as a starter.
"Those teams my freshman and sophomore years were probably the most talented in UT history," Darden said.
As his college career continued, however, UT basketball was in transition. After the final year of the Ernie & Bernie Show in '77, Mears became ill and the '78 Vols were coached on an interim basis by Cliff Wettig. They went 11-16 Darden's junior season.
Mears was forced to retire and Don DeVoe was hired as Vols coach. Having apprenticed under Bob Knight as an assistant at Army, DeVoe was a disciplinarian who believed in man-to-man defense and inside scoring. The pace slowed.
"He was totally different from Coach Mears," Darden said. "You're talking night and day as far as coaching philosophies and mannerisms on and off the court."
The makeup of UT's roster for the '79 season included some talented holdovers from the Mears era such as Reggie Johnson, Howard Wood, Terry Crosby and Darden, not to mention future pro wrestling superstar Kevin Nash, as well DeVoe recruits Gary Carter and Steve Ray.….
…One of the high points was the SEC Tournament in Darden's senior season, the first since the event was discontinued in 1952. LSU and Tennessee, which finished Nos. 1 and 2 in the conference during the regular season, received double-byes into the tournament semifinals.
"The tournament was new so we didn't know what to expect. Nobody did," he said. "We went out and played good basketball and wound up winning. It was a great feeling."