New details coming out about how Tennessee’s Chris Lofton fought a private battle away from the cameras:

But Lofton’s greatest conquest came off the court.

He beat cancer.

The three-time All-American, in an exclusive interview with ESPN.com, revealed for the first time publicly that he played his senior season at Tennessee after undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from one of his testicles in March 2007.

And from the Sports Illustrated.

“Chris didn’t want it to be a distraction to his teammates, therefore he didn’t tell his teammates,” Pearl said. “And he certainly didn’t want an excuse if he wasn’t playing quite as well as the year before.”

The questions about Lofton’s play from fans and reporters certainly bothered the senior, Pearl said.

The team finally got to a point about halfway through the season where Pearl knew Lofton needed to take more shots and find better ways to get open. So he told Lofton he needed more to keep the team from losing and immediately saw a difference.

In a day of instant media attention, Lofton not only beat the odds in fighting cancer, but also did it privately with the help of family and friends which is amazing indeed.

Rich from Shot Across The Bow also weighs in as well as PTH from Six Meat Buffet.

For those of you who don’t know, sports broadcaster Dick Vitale was voted into the college basketball hall of fame earlier this year as a broadcaster.

FOX Sports Columnist Mark Kriegel takes exception to this in his latest column:

Dick Vitale wasn’t a player. His coaching career — culminating with a 34-60 record for the Detroit Pistons — was a failure. And while the Hall recognizes media members with its Curt Gowdy Award (a distinction Vitale has already won), one cannot be enshrined as a mere broadcaster. So, again, how the hell did he get in?

Is he insightful? Thoughtful? Provocative? Courageous?

No, no, no and no. He’s loud. He’s a salesman. In fact, the very same qualities that served him so well on television have made him the perfect shill for Hooters. Also, he’s relentless. As people in the basketball business know too well, Vitale has been lobbying for entry into the Hall for years. The movement, such as it was, was spearheaded by influential letter writers campaigning on his behalf, most of them famous coaches whose butts he’s kissed for years. Foremost among them was Bobby Knight, the media-basher now cashing ESPN’s checks. Vitale has been on air since 1979; the next tough word he has for Bobby Knight will be his first.

I have to say I agree with a lot of what he says. Putting aside my personal feelings about Vitale, I will agree that he’s done nothing that indicates he should be in the hall of fame. But it just proves that this, like a lot of things in life, is about who you know and how you play the game rather than any merit or value you may add.

The winner of the Music City Bloggers Bracketology Contest 2008 is……

:::drum roll:::

the MStateDawgs owned by Eric L.

Congratulations Eric.  You’ve earned bragging rights for the next year as champion.

Did you know that the tiger is the most dangerous animal in the wild? I’m deducing from that fact that a tiger could whip a wildcat, in the wild, if such a match-up were to occur.

Did you know that no men’s team from the state of Tennessee has ever won a National Championship? Did you know that only four schools have fielded both a women’s championship team and a men’s championship team (only once in the same year)?

Did you know that in the 26 years of NCAA women’s championships, that only 13 different schools have won the championship (including the two playing tonight)?

Tonight’s men’s game will be the 70th NCAA men’s championship game. Kansas is a previous winner. Memphis State has never won (they lost to UCLA in the finals back in the 70s). If Kansas wins, there will still be 35 different schools who have won a men’s championship (Memphis will be the 36th if they win).

Tonight’s’ trivia question: Can you name the 35 men’s’ teams who have won NCAA championships and the 13 women’s’ teams? I got 26 of the men’s teams and 7 of the women’s. If you cheat and look it up, let that be on your conscience. Put your HONEST answers in the comments section. I’ll treat the winner* to a meal at the Phunky Griddle on the weekend of your convenience.

I’m hoping that after tonight there will be 36 different teams who have won a men’s championship, which would mean that the state of Tennessee would finally have a men’s winner. I imagine that most folks around here are going to be hoping for a Tennessee sweep tonight and tomorrow night. I’m pretty sure I know one person who WON’T be wearing orange tomorrow night.

My predictions: Tiger, tiger, burning bright tonight, and tomorrow night’s color will not be orange.

*The person with the most correct answers.  2nd place gets you two meals with me..(I never get sick of that joke…)

I’ll admit that I’m new to the University of Memphis bandwagon (is that redundant?), but I’m hoping they win this whole thing. That being said, each time I’ve heard Memphis Coach John Calipari in an interview I have gotten the impression that he is trying to prove something. Maybe he has been working the “underdog” or “underappreciated” shtick so as to motivate his team, but I really prefer for a coach to just save the emotive and emotional stuff for the locker room.

Well, Coach Calipari just pulled a boner in the post-semi-final game press conference. At least I saw it that way, but I’m also not the type that swoons at a Barack Obama campaign rally. Calipari made a point (I don’t think it was in response to a question) to say at the end of the press conference (at least I think it was the end) that Memphis needed to win the championship because there is poverty and hardship in Memphis . . . kids in Memphis need a reason to have hope. He then said something along the lines of, “I’m not saying anything against where these other schools are located, but this is important for our city.”

What’s up with that? While looking for some sort of transcript of the press conference in question, I came across this story about Calipari’s being a stemwinding stalwart. Maybe I just need to avoid watching coach interviews until this season has passed.

In the country of the Colossi, Kansas, North Carolina, UCLA and Memphis State, little Davidson College (that’s right, COLLEGE), home of 1,700 bright students, has won its way tonight into the Elite 8 of the NCAA men’s tourney. Seeded 10th (roughly expected to be the 40-43rd best team in the tournament), the Davidson Wildcats trapped the Badgers of Wisconsin who probably thought their 3 seed was good for another round or two.

Davidson is lead by the son of former NBA sharp-shooter Dell Curry, young Stephen Curry, who might just be the best player in this tournament. Even ‘King’ James LeBron showed up tonight to see Curry in person, worthy praise from the man who just might be the best basketball player in the world. Curry only outscored the entire Wisconsin team in the second half of the game.

Every few years a team like Davidson pushes its way into the world of athletic factories sponsored by sneaker makers. The Wildcats will probably get knocked off by Kansas on Sunday, but it’s nice to see actual student-athletes excel on such a level. Most of us root for the underdog if we don’t have a rooting interest in a particular team. I’m guessing that Curry and company don’t consider themselves underdogs…wouldn’t it be something if they were right?

Another cool thing at play here is that the Board of Directors of Davidson colleges paid for any Davidson student who wished to make the trip to see the game, including lodging and food. Even though classes were not called off, and it’s a LONG way from the Carolinas to Detroit, several hundred students took up the B O D on the offer and cheered their team on tonight.

In other news, the Tigers of Memphis University are going to be playing Texas on Sunday, unless they think the game is over with 10 minutes left to go and leave the arena. Coach Izzo of the losing Michigan State Wolverines is probably gonna go schizo after watching this one on the tape if he doesn’t destroy the tape first.

My apologies to those of you who couldn’t possibly care less about basketball, but Laura over at Fixin’ Supper takes a break from dinner to talk about basketball grudges. She and I share some grudges and we both struggled during last night’s Tennessee versus Louisville game. For her, UT is both a rival of Memphis and Vanderbilt (her two teams), so the Vols top her list. Check out the rest of her list here.

For me, it’s a little more complicated. I’ve held a grudge against Louisville since I was a small child, when I’m not even sure Tennessee had a basketball team (I keed, I keed). UT didn’t even get on my grudge-dar until I discovered while in college at Memphis that my school also had a football team (that–with one notable and oft-referenced exception–routinely got whipped by the Vols). And after the Metro conference dissolved, we had a new basketball rival, Cincinnati. And Bob Huggins. Read a couple of pages here to get a little of the story. I never threw anything at him, but I most certainly did shout “Bundy” at him (25 pounds ago, he resembled the guy who played Al Bundy on “Married…With Children”).

So, with that little history lesson, I present my top basketball grudges: Read the rest of this entry »

Is it just me, or did the CBS announcers in the WKU v. UCLA game start shoveling dirt onto WKU a little prematurely . . . when they were only 6 points down with 1:25 to go in the game?

On that note, the CBS announcers in the UT v. UL game were talking up the Vols beyond even the point at which my boys had lost all hope.

Go Tigers.

Last week I was in Lima (Peru, not Ohio) visiting my Peace Corp volunteering daughter. The timing of the trip was based on the Metro Nashville Spring break (my wife is a teacher). Had I planned the trip and timing was not an issue, I would have opted for the previous week - cheaper airfares because the week of Easter is bum-rushed with touristas and, much more importantly, the fact that the first week of the NCAA March Madness tourney began the week we visited Peru. Those first two days of the tournament are as much fun as just about anything other than consensual sex or watching UT fans leave Vandy’s gym after the Orange is peeled.

By the time Thursday rolled around, I was jonesing for a way to watch just a little b-ball. Granted, Lima is an amazing vibrant city and there is more to see there than can possibly be seen in one week, but I had so many great meals and cultural experiences that I was more than ready for a simple hamburger and a large-screen TV with satellite connectivity.

Luckily we ate lunch on Thursday with another Peace Corps volunteer who happened to be a sports freak. He tipped us to an establishment called ‘The Corner Bar’, near the ocean in the same neighborhood in which we were staying. Even luckier,  my wife and daughter were also longing for a hamburger and were willing to watch a little basketball wishing for something to shut me up re said basketball tourney.

We ambled into the Corner Bar with about 10 minutes to go in the Belmont game. At this point, I need to let you know that I went to Lipscomb and normally am an arch-enemy of the Bruins. But, once another Nashville team made the tourney, I was more than willing to set aside my animus* for the followers of the headless harbinger, and cheer for the local team.

To my amazement, the bar full of mostly native sports fans began rooting for Belmont. Most of them had no idea where Belmont was located, but everyone knew that they were underdogs AND pretty much everyone I know LOVES to see Duke lose**. Suddenly, every TV in the bar except one***, was tuned to the Belmont-Duke game. The crowd became as one, cheering for each Bruin basket, and groaning when Duke scored. My wife, the only person in Nashville in 1999 who didn’t care that the Titans were in the Super Bowl, was cheering and groaning with the crowd. The last minute was met with shared frustration and not a little cursing. I wish Belmont had won, but it was amazing being in another continent and sharing those moments.

*Actually, some of my best friends include Baptists, Anti-Baptists and truly anti Baptists.

**Apparently, our experience coincided with ‘The Sports Guy‘. He had watched four games in Anaheim (in person), and checked into a bar after the games to watch the Belmont-Duke game. From his column:

‘…everyone at that same bar had more fun drinking and watching the K-State/USC and Duke/Belmont games on TV than anything we witnessed in our four games. It’s absolutely incredible how many people despise Duke and how the entire place galvanized behind Belmont at the end like it was the 1980 Olympic hockey team. If Belmont had pulled off the upset victory, there’s a 25 percent chance that we’d still be there drinking and celebrating four days later.’

***There was one dude who insisted on watching some dumb futbol game..go figure.

Experts across the nation are breaking down the NCAA field today and will probably continue until the games tip-off on Thursday. (Speaking personally, I’m already tired of hearing from Bobby Knight on ESPN).

But just when I thought I’d seen every way to break down the brackets known to humanity, along comes Josh Tinley with a fresh, interesting and new way to break down some of the participants in this year’s NCAA field.

Why wait until Thursday or Friday to have your office productivity drop dramatically?

You can start today and participate in the Music City Bloggers Bracket Pick-’Em Contest!

It’s free over at Yahoo! At stake: Well, bragging rights and the sense of personal satisfaction you’ll get for making the right picks.

So, why not join in if you haven’t already done so?

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/register/joinprivategroup_assign_team?GID=38046&P=nashvegas

Group: 38046 password: nashvegas

Reading the headlines on USA Today this morning, I saw the wrap-up of yesterday’s Seattle SuperSonics vs Denver Nuggets NBA game.

Now, most of the time, the NBA doesn’t really capture my interest. But when I saw the headline, I did a double-take.

Seems the Nuggets scored 168 points yesterday..in regulation. And they won by 52 points with the final score being 168-116.

All I can say is–holy cow!

If you tuned into most of the sports call-in shows yesterday, you know that the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders’ big win Monday night was the talk of the town.  Their upset win over South Alabama Monday night even made the first segment of SportsCenter Tuesday morning.

The win earned them a bid to play in the Sunbelt Conference Championship against Western Kentucky.  The winner gets an automatic bid to the Big Dance.

Alas, MTSU came up a bit short in the championship game. 

That said, congratulations are in order to the team and coach Kermit Davis for their accomplishments–not just in the tournament, but all season.  I have to admit part of me hoped they’d win the game if only to get yet another Tennessee team a bid to the Big Dance. 

The question now becomes–will the Sunbelt get three teams in?  There’s talk that South Alabama will get a bid since they won the regular season conference championship.  And there was buzz that MTSU could get an at-large bid to the Big Dance. 

Selfishly, I’m glad MTSU won Monday night because their win might have knocked Florida out of the Big Dance, unless the Gators win the SEC Tournament.  And any day that something not positive happens to the Gators is a good day for me…

It’s that time of year–time to pick your brackets. While the official brackets won’t come out until Sunday evening, I’ve gone ahead and set up a Yahoo! Brackets contest for the Music City Bloggers crowd.

You will have to sign up for a Yahoo account if you don’t have one. But they’re free.

We won’t have any fabulous prizes available, nor will I offer to sing the fight song of your favorite team if you win. Instead, we’ll just say it’s for fun and bragging rights.

Plus if you don’t have people who do the office pool, you can join in the fun. Or if you’re like me and figure it’s easier and less frustrating to just roll down the window and throw the money out as you drive down one of our fine interstates here, you can join in for the fun and frivolity knowing its only cost you a bit of pride if you pick that big 16 vs 1 upset that doesn’t happen in the first round.

Here’s the link to sign up: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/register/joinprivategroup_assign_team?GID=38046&P=nashvegas

The password (should you need it) is: nashvegas and the group ID is 38046.

If you have any problems, drop a comment or a message and I’ll send you a personal invite.

Actually the name of the bar is the NCAA tournament, and despite the oft-myopic ESPN-ian view that college basketball is only played on the east and west coasts of the round-ball nation, Tennessee, that is to say Tennessee, is going to send FIVE men’s teams to the NCAA tournament:

Austin Peay, Belmont, Memphis, Tennessee and Vandy. Let’s see, 65 teams go to big prom* (one of the team’s has to ‘play-in’). There are fifty states in this country, so that would normally be an average of 1.3 teams per state invited to the big soiree**, which I believe puts Tennessee 3.84 teams higher*** than the average, or to put this in non-mathematical terms, we’re basket ballin’****. In fact, we are downright Mesopotamian - at this point, our state has TWO number ONE seeds, a five seed, and two mid-major conference winners who are not going to be sacrificed to the jaws of number one (looks like Austin Peay and Belmont are going to get at least 15 seeds).

So, congratulations to the latest entrants into the grande’ rave’*****: Local heroes Belmont and Clarksville’s Austin Peay Governors. Fist bumps to the area teams already shaking it: Memphis, UT and Vanderbilt. Lot’s all go out there and show ESPN how we roll******!

* Uh, trying to avoid that horrid cliche: “the big dance

** Dancing around the horrid cliche, but not really doing any better

***Totally ignore the math. The point is that Tennessee has more teams going on to the Big Rumba than most states

**** Ballin in the Urban Dictionary sense of the word (definitions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7).

***** This is probably stupider than Big Soiree

****** Is there a 2008 replacement for this now lame-o ‘how we roll’

The premiere league in women’s college basketball’s conference tournament tips off today here in Nashville.

The first game features Ole Miss taking on Mississippi State at Noon CST.  Following that it’s Florida vs South Carolina.  The evening games find Georgia taking on Alabama and Auburn battling Arknasas.

Local favorites the Lady Vols and the Lady Commodores have first-round byes and start play tomorrow.  LSU and Kentucky also have first-round byes.

The championship game will be played Sunday evening and shown to a national audience on ESPN.  All other games will be on Fox SS on your cable package. 

The favorites going into the tournament are the Lady Vols, the Lady Tigers of LSU and the Lady Commodores.

Should be a great weekend of women’s basketball here in Music City. 

“I was a witness”*

When you were a kid (and maybe a few years after that), when you were in the backyard (or the driveway or the gym) shooting baskets, you practiced your buzzer-beater game-winning jump shots, counting down the final seconds, the roar of the crowd whirring in your head, 10-9-8 spin move at the top of the key 7-6 you spin off a pick and head fake your opponent into Nebraska 5-4-3, your jump shot forming, peaking 2-1 SWISH BUZZER. Yeah, you were by yourself, and you might have had to shoot that dang last shot 14 times to get it just right, but you did just that if you ever owned a basketball and were near a goal.

Most of us don’t get the opportunity (and don’t deserve the opportunity) to make that shot in a real game. Very few of us get a chance to take that shot in our last home game in our last season in front of a gym of screaming fans to finish off a perfect season with the perfect jump shot. Most of us aren’t Shan (pronounced Shane) Foster. Hell, none of us come close.

Shan and his teammates played a formidable Mississippi State squad tonight featuring Nashville’s own Jamont Gordon. Vandy trailed most of the game. Foster is the best 3-point shooter ever seen in Vandy-land, but tonight his first six shots went awry, and some of us (not me, of course**) were beginning to worry. But then, sometime early in the second half, an invisible hand turned on the switch, and Mr. Foster hit NINE STRAIGHT three point shots, including the foreshadowed shot with 2.7 seconds left to win the game.

Some of those threes were from another planet, another state of consciousness. He finished with 42 points. His previous high was 33. Tonight, on senior night, he took the team on his back and took them to victory. I’ve seen a LOT of Vandy games, and I’ve never seen anything quite like we saw tonight. Seriously, some of these nine shots were from more than 30 feet away. None, not one, was uncontested. There were hands in his face and bodies doubling and tripling around him everytime he touched the ball.

Vandy won every, that is EVERY, home game this season. Foster certainly didn’t win the games by himself, but I’m here to testify that if Foster was elsewhere tonight, the Vanderbilt men would not be undefeated at home.

Foster not only brought the Vandy team home, but he brought a lot of us back to those late afternoons, when we dribbled to the key, pulled up, and hit a jump shot as true and pure as the heart of a child.

*Vandy point guard Jermaine Beal referring to Shan Foster’s beyond-incredible final home game.

**Lying through my teeth, here.

Michigan womens’ basketball team loses to Wisconsin. Michigan coach Kevin Borseth doesn’t seem to rebound from the loss too well..witness his post-game chat with the press. I don’t think he cared a lot for the officiating, either.

Thanks to the wonderful Squirrel Queen, from whence this video was purloined borrowed.

Pleasant dreams last night as the last image I saw before falling asleep was a smiling Joe Dubin announcing Vanderbilt’s 72-69 win over the University of Tennessee. I don’t have cable, so I didn’t get to see the game, but luckily, Laura Creekmore was liveblogging the event and has all the highlights.

*snip*

10:03 Bless those Vols and their poor FT shooting.

*snip*

I think I heard more than a few UT fans saying that exact same thing last Saturday night. But I digress. Check out Laura’s blog (usually more about food than sports) for her very entertaining commentary.

Hutchmo wrote up his thoughts over at his place including this one:

It’s pretty bad when fans yell at refs for making calls in FAVOR of their team, begging to let the game unfurl naturally.

Really? Now I’m really sore I missed this game. Hello, Comcast? Um, yeah…

Vandy grad Busy Mom keeps it short and sweet: “Yee. Effing. Hah.”

And what about MCB contributor Big Orange Michael? The smack talk has subsided in favor of delusion:

I know we lost and I’ll give credit to Vanderbilt for playing a good game and catching the Vols at the right time to pull off an upset. But that said, we don’t know what will happen this week. Perhaps Memphis will have its own stumble following the spotlight and national attention of Saturday night. Another couple of teams below us could lose and we could stay stay number one. I’m not saying it’s likely, but I am saying that it could happen.

Seriously? Stay number one after being beaten by a #16? Um, no. I’m not sure that Memphis is going to automatically regain their top spot, but I do think that (and this is good news for fans across the state, for the most part) we’ll see three Tennessee universities in the top 10 on Monday. Not the state’s largest university, though. Sorry, Blue Raiders. 

Aside: How much do I love the photo of Bruce Pearl over on the Commercial Appeal’s website? Lots and lots. Vandy’s win wiped the smug right off his face. I, personally, have never been happier about the outcome of an SEC basketball game.

Mark Rose, true-blue University of Memphis fan, is not much daunted by the Tigers loss to UT, but he still hates ‘the media‘:

Congratulations to UT. You can be #1 now, hang that bull’s eye around your neck, and let the media hound you relentlessly for as long as you can stay #1. We were #1 for five weeks. It was an honor. But the sports media does not let you enjoy it. Because of this, being #1 is more of a burden than a blessing.

……Note to media: We Memphis fans didn’t harbor any dreams of an undefeated season….That dream is very much alive, perhaps even more so now that the sports media can no longer hold the Sword of Damocles of going undefeated over our heads. It’s over. We’ve lost a game — a very close down-to-the-wire game — to the new #1 team in the nation.

…..The sports media do not like Memphis. They never have — not when we were in the Metro Conference, not when we were in the Great Midwest Conference, not when Conference USA was a powerhouse, and not now. If you don’t believe me, listen to the CBS announcers during a Memphis game during the NCAA tournament. No, I’m not claiming victim-hood here. I actually relish being despised by the media.

You could take the Memphis team as it is, put them in Duke jerseys, change John Calipari’s name to Mike Krzyzewski, and you would have an instant media darling. But that’s not the way it is. And it’s fine by me. As I often remind my son, who is frustrated to no end by the sports media, words don’t win basketball games, predictions don’t put any points on the board, and the prophets on ESPN and CBS don’t know any more about who is going to win than we do.

Memphis did play an incredibly difficult pre-conference schedule, but is this a case of a Rose by any other name calling wolf? No doubt, Conference USA gets little respect, but is the media the problem here, or is it a case of a mostly great team that needs to learn how to shoot free throws? I haven’t watched a lot of Memphis U basketball this year, but it seems to me that at least the game announcers were pretty dang complimentary of the Calipar-ians.

For the first time in the history of University of Tennessee men’s basketball, the team is (likely to be) ranked #1 in the NCAA. Follow these links to see what some of greater MusicCity’s bloggers are saying about it:

Sadcox.

Big Orange Michael (also below).

Left of the Dial.

Preston Taylor Holmes.

SayUncle.

Mark Rose (at GOTIGERS.blogspot.com) ;).

Holy ****, the Tennessee Vols will be number one come Monday!   A great game, won at the line with two huge free throws by Chris Lofton.

The legend of Bruce Pearl continues to grow.

Of course, it’s all how the Vols take this win and build on it that will give it meaning.

A great game all around.  Hard-fought on both sides of the ball.  Of course, I know the right team won, but I tip my hat to the Memphis Tigers for a tough, gritty performance tonight.  If things work out like they should, we’ll meet in the Final Four for a rematch.

Now it’s time to celebrate because tomorrow we’ve got to focus on a huge game Tuesday here in Nashville.

Go Big Orange!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I spotted this complete waste of fabric (click to embiggen) at the Dick’s Sporting Goods over in Nashville West this week. For those of you who could not possibly care less about college basketball, the t-shirt is referencing tonight’s big game between the #1 University of Memphis Tigers versus #2 University of Tennessee. I don’t know about Vols fans, but I can tell you I’d never buy this shirt. No orange T will ever be draped on my person. In fact, I don’t even own any orange clothing. Or anything clothing in the spectrum of orange–no melon, no peach, apricot, tangerine, pumpkin, persimmon, or even gamboge. No fruit-tinted orangey stuff in my wardrobe (and hardly even in my refrigerator) at all. And though it’s much harder to avoid blue, I’d hazard a guess that most UT fans wouldn’t want a big blue M anywhere on their bodies.

Incidentally, there was not a stitch of other clothing in that store with a big blue M on it, but there was plenty of UT merchandise (side note: I don’t recall seeing any Vandy-wear, either), so I’m just going to assume that Dick’s just generally serves a certain clientele. Hey, don’t look at me–I was just in there to buy an Aerobie. And I left empty-handed. It was all reels, guns and golf clubs. Target had the Aerobie, though.  

For those of you who aren’t supporting the Preds tonight, you can see the basketball game starting at 8pm on ESPN. How big is this game? The Commercial Appeal has coverage of the madness.

Just in case you’re just in from Jupiter, I figured I’d tell you that’s a big basketball game tomorrow night.

In what’s being called the biggest basketball game in state history, the number one Memphis Tigers will host the second-ranked University of Tennessee Volunteers. The game has received a lot of hype which all ramped up this week when the Vols were voted number two in both polls.

It’s been reported that tickets are for sale on StubHub for $10,000 a pair. ESPN Game Day will be in Memphis covering the game and the contest will be shown nationally in prime-time tomorrow night.

A lot of experts have made predications and breakdowns of the game. Here are a few thoughts on why I believe Tennessee can win this game tomorrow night.

• Looking at the trend of the last four times that in-state rivals have faced off with a one vs two match-up, the number two team has won all four times. One small factor: the games were all on the number two’s home court. This one is at Tiger High, not in the mighty Thompson-Boling Arena
• Tennessee has a better field-goal made percentage than Tiger High. It’s not great, mind you. But in a game like this one, it could be factor.
• Tiger High has all the pressure on them to remain unbeaten. ESPN ran a story on it Monday and it’s only got more extreme as the week has gone on. The Vols can play looser because they don’t have the pressure of perfection in a big game. Just look at what that pressure did to the Patriots a few weeks ago.

No matter what, it should be a good game. It will be a great game if the right team (aka the one in orange and white) wins the game.

And just to show how good our state is in basketball, Tuesday night features another nationally televised, in-state showdown as UT travels to Nashville to play Vanderbilt.

A good time to be a basketball fan….

All three of the state’s top 25 college basketball teams had nailbiting wins last night. The #1 ranked University of Memphis Tigers barely scraped by the University of Alabama-Birmingham Blazers 79-78 in a game that was so down-to-the-wire that ESPN was already reporting “IMPERFECT” as the headline on their homepage at the game’s end, convinced that the Tigers had fallen. But a rally in the last minute of the game and a shot by the Blazer that came off right after the buzzer gave Memphis the win. Even UAB fans thought they’d won and even stormed the court to congratulate their team only to find out they’d lost–and then lost their cool by shouting at and throwing bottles and other items at Tiger players. Yikes.

In Athens, the University of Tennessee also had a “tight finish” 74-71 win over Georgia, staving off a late-game rally by the Bulldogs. The discussion over at the Tennessean seems to be more focused on this coming Saturday’s game instead of last night’s game, though. Looks like UT fans are giving UAB fans some competition on obnoxiousness level. Though I will have to concede that no Memphis fan has any right to mention anything about another team’s free throws. I have a feeling that the Tigers will be spending much of the next week practicing from the line. Seriously–second-rate school and second-rate city? There’s no need to be so rude.

And finally, Vanderbilt had a 61-58 win over Florida thanks to some key missteps by the Gators in the final seconds of the game. With just 24 seconds left in the game, they were up 59-58 and then took advantage of a lucky break with a backcourt violation and a foul by the Gators.

They weren’t all pretty, but they’re all “W”s and that’s what counts. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in the state heading for the medicine cabinet last night.

Now, of course, Memphis and UT fans are looking forward to the big game next Saturday night at 8pm in Memphis (televised on ESPN). After that, Tennessee’s got another tough in-state challenge when they come to Nashville the following Tuesday night to play the Commodores.

There’s no doubt about it, Tennessee’s the best state to be in for NCAA basketball. And it’s not just men’s basketball. The top-ranked women of Tennessee are in town today visiting the #25 Lady Commodores for what should be a very good (and sold out) game at 2:30.