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Well, I have to give credit where credit is due. Pearl has brought UT Knoxville's basketball program probably higher than they've ever been as far as the national spotlight, winning the SEC (first time since seatbelts were required on cars), being ranked #1 for a week (we can't be too critical of that -- the same thing happened to us our first time), and beating two very good Memphis teams two years in a row (they've beaten Memphis 5 times in a row before, but those were lousy teams). Those things are not in question -- they happened, can't deny them. Kudos, blah, blah, blah . . .
What this thread is about, however (for Vol fans who want to bring up any or all of the above facts), is the character and personality of Bruce Pearl, and I couldn't agree more that he has plenty of room for improvement in those areas. There are, of course, reasons for everything. Bruce Pearl, unlike coach Cal and most other Division I college basketball head coaches, never played basketball -- wasn't athletic, wasn't good enough to make a team, couldn't play period. But he absolutely loved the game and wanted, somehow, to be associated with it. So he worked at it from the ground up, starting as a volunteer (no pun intended) and spending 14 years as an assistant and 9 years in Division II before he ever got a chance of his own as a head coach in Division I. Then it took 4 more years before he was able to land a job as head coach at a major Division I school. So, the guy put in his time -- again, no question about it.
But back to the character issue. When he was an assistant, he recruited a player and, after losing the recruiting battle, set up the player in a phone conversation that he secretly recorded and then turned in the student and the other school to the NCAA for rules violations. What a gracious loser. The other coach calls him "a snake." There have been other telltale signs, of course, like not letting Tyler Smith out of his LOI after he wanted out when Pearl took over the program, the language and attitude at the pregame pep rally in Memphis, the groping of Erin Andrews on national TV -- but, in general, he's just an arrogant Jewish guy from Boston with a big chip on his shoulder because he couldn't play basketball himself. He does have coaching skills and somehow gets players to believe his stuff isn't all about him, but that's what he is in a nutshell. And he's turned the annual game against Memphis, which we have played for years only as an undesireable condition of UTK playing us in football, into their Super Bowl. And, to be honest, back when Memphis was struggling in the 70's, we used to do the same thing with Louisville (although they were at least in our conference.) If we just beat Louisville, that made our season a good year no matter how we actually finished. That's the way Pearl has the Vols thinking, now, and that's why they seem to want that game more than we do. They need it for a sense of accomplishment. Congratulations Bruce, you won.
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