Some Thoughts on the SEC Tourney Championship Game
Monday, March 16, 2009
I was 11 years old in 1991 when Tennessee advanced to the final against Vanderbilt. Coincidentally, those games were played in Vandy's Memorial Gym. This was the final year of Wade Houston's tenure as a coach, and Tennessee lost to an Alabama team featuring Latrell Spreewell and James "Hollywood" Robinson. I was crushed, but convinced that sooner or later my team would win the SEC Tournament. Now I'm 29 and crushed anew. In my life as a Vol fan we still haven't won a conference tournament. Here are the teams that have won since I was born: Mississippi State (three times), Georgia (three times), Kentucky (12 times), LSU, Florida (three times), Alabama (five times), Arkansas, Auburn, and Ole Miss. Only Tennessee, Vanderbilt, and South Carolina haven't won the tourney in this time and South Carolina's only been eligible for about sixteen years.
And it's not just futility, it's futility while being favored. The litany of Vol first round losses after receiving byes is legion. In 1999, 2000, and 2006 we were the first seed and lost in our first game. Over the seven years from 1994-2000 we won two games. Every single year of my entire life, I've read the same stories, had the same optimism, and we've found a way to lose. No matter the situation. Tornado require the games be played in front of a high school crowd? Lose. Every other team not show up and all we have to do is cut down the nets without accidentally slicing our jugular? Lose...and bleed to death on the court. The litany of failure is exhausting to recapitulate. But here goes if you dare.
The last two years have been particularly painful, every advantage has been ours, the league is down, we're the best team remaining in the field and we've choked twice. last year Vegas had us as 1 to 2 favorites to win the tournament. 1 to 2! You bet $100 and you only collected $50 if we won. That's how much better we were than the rest of the field. Of cours we found a way to lose. In the process we lost our number one seed and ended up with the worst tournament draw that a 2 seed has ever gotten. We were in a bracket with the best one seed, the best three seed, and had to play a top ten team in the second round.
But this one was the worst. After an 18 year wait we just had to beat an NIT team playing their fourth game in a row to win the championship. A team whose entire offense philosophy is "take contested threes." They shot 28 threes and just 19 two-point baskets. And they only made 7 threes. Yet, of course, we choked. Just when you thought the Charge of the Cameltoe Brigade (nee Great Wall of Vagina) was going to be remembered for something, anything at all, we tripped on the way to cutting down the nets, impaled ourselves on the scissors, and made Jarvis Varnado look capable of actually spelling either his first or second name.
And make no mistake about it, this was an epic choke job. Given three virtually consecutive possessions inside of twenty seconds (save one second) this is what Tennessee's offense produced: a J.P. Prince travel that led to the most generous foul call on record, a bricked second free throw, a five-second count after a gift mishandled rebound by Miss. State, and a turnover pass mere seconds after the inbounds. Not once, when the championship was there to be won, could we even manage to get a shot up at the rim. Not once.
1. There's lots of talk about why the Charge of the Cameltoe Brigade is so inconsistent, but the reality is it boils down to one man, when Tyler Smith plays well we win, when he plays awful we lose. You can spend a lot of time wondering why we're so inconsistent but the reality is if Tyler shoots above 40% from the field we're 17-5. Just 40%. Get to above 50% and we've just lost twice all season, at Ole Miss and at Auburn. Our three worst games down the stretch @ Kentucky (1-11), home against Alabama (3-15), and yesterday against Miss. State (2-14), Tyler shot 6-40 from the field combined. Let me repeat that 6-40.
As Tyler Smith goes so go the Vols.
2. I've written a lot about officiating and how complaining is for whiny fans. So this isn't a complaint because the end result evened out. But there were four calls made by that crew inside of thirty seconds. All of them were wrong, but they were so bad they actually balanced out.
a. There was no foul on Tennessee with the shot clock running down and the score 61-60. The player just fell. Whistle, two free throws made.
b. J.P. Prince walked on the ensuing possession but the refs bailed him out with a foul call.
c. Tyler Smith clearly got the timeout before the five second clock expired.
d. Nine times out of ten Tennessee gets called for a foul when Miss. State's freshman guard stepped out of bounds.
All of these were the wrong calls, but they balanced out. Unbelievable.
3. As if that weren't enough, after all the clock issues, the clock didn't start on Tennessee's final possession until Tyler Smith got to half court. There was at least two extra seconds on that play. How bad are our outside shooters that I wanted Tatum to kick it to a wide open Chism from the corner on that play?
If he gets that shot then Chism would have attempted 10 threes on the game. 10!
4. I can't resist writing about this either, did anyone else see in the Alabama game when Scotty dunked the ball and then ran back up the court doing the Superman pose and knocked over the official? They had to stop the game to make sure the official was okay. This was the perfect metaphor for the Vols season.
5. I can't wait until 2027 when we get back to the championship game again and lose. That's going to be so awesome. Labels: sec championship game tennessee mississippi state
Posted by Clay Travis at 10:25 AM
 
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
4 Comments:
<< Home
Previous Posts
| |
Travis has become enamored of several objects, phrases or events which he frequenly references in the column. Among the most frequent:
'Bama Bangs - a term coined by Travis to refer to southern men's hairstyles that feature prominent bangs for no apparent reason. Brodie Croyle and John Parker Wilson are oft-cited violators of 'Bama Bangs rules.
Read More...
When Clay Travis, acclaimed author of Dixieland Delight, decided to spend the 2008 season up close and personal with UT football, he—and every other college football aficionado—thought he was in for a rollicking ride with one of the leading contenders for the national title. After all, when the Vols kicked off the season on September 1, the defending SEC East champions were ranked 18th in the country. As head coach Phillip Fulmer prepared for the game, he reflected upon a coaching career that included an astounding 147 victories, two SEC championships, and a national title. With 34 years at UT under his belt as both a player and coach, the Tennessee native had just signed a contract extension that projected to keep him at the university long enough to become the winningest coach in program history.
Read More...
There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory.
Read More...
The newly favored man is not really a man at all, but a hairless, effeminate, germ-fearing, non-meat-eating, exfoliating, wristband-wearing woman of the worst order. We as men are told that we must embrace the sacred feminine in ourselves, even if it doesn't actually exist, and become the very quintessence of woman, plus penises. This situation is untenable. This trend must stop.
Read More...
Clay Travis is the only former student manager in the history of college athletics to marry an NFL cheerleader. He managed to pull this off despite an irrational affinity for the television shows Dawson's Creek and My Super Sweet 16. While being raised in Nashville, Tenn., Travis developed a healthy obsession with college sports and Alyssa Milano. As a teenager his greatest accomplishment was taking a doo-rag wearing Luke Duke (balling as Tom Wopat) to the hole at the Nashville YMCA.
In the midst of a stellar legal career during which he specialized in rewarding the unjust and punishing the oppressed, Travis began writing for CBS Sports's SPiN section in September 2005...
Read More...
|
Clay I echo your thoughts but I don't think that was Houston's last year. He coached through 1994I believe.
You're correct.
I thought 1991 was the 5-22 season. Sadly, this was just the second year of his tenure.
I agree that in the last 20 seconds of the game the terrible calls balanced out. But, I think Tyler's troubles from the field came from poor offensive spacing... he wasn't used to playing 8 on 5. Chism dragging Varnado down and Varnado getting the foul? A mystery 10 second backcourt call that so stupefied the announcers that they claimed Pearl called a timeout... while his team was on defense? Both teams have a right to gripe about this one.
But we're all SEC brothers now. And we're fighting an uphill NCAA battle as LSU, Tenn, and MSU's seeding indicates that the committee deemed us (at best) as the 29th, 33rd, and 49th best teams in the country. No doubt the SEC has had better years, but come on...
Some of the worst officiating I've ever seen -- ever. It would have been so entertaining to have Bobby Knight as the color guy on this one. He probably would have become the first media member to throw a chair on the court.
Also, LSU, MSU, and my Vols have to remember they are playing for SEC pride now, and turn it up a notch.