Tennessee vs West Virginia

The second game of the StubHub Legends Classic on Versus with Dennis Miller sports "funnies" during the commercial breaks promised to be an exciting game, the fiery Bruce Pearl vs the fiery Bob Huggins! Wow, it looked good on paper! But the games are not played on paper. So it was quite disappointing that the first 30 minutes of the game were a whistlefest instead. But...

... the last ten minutes made up for it a bit, with a more open and exciting game developing. In that game we saw a hybrid Huggins, with trademark John Beilein backdoors, three point showers, and 1-3-1 zone being employed. It will be interesting to see how long Huggins can stay with his players shooting threes like there's no tomorrow. There is certainly talent on the team, but how fast can Beilein-ball become Huggins-ball, and how well can Huggins and his players adapt to a temporary hybrid style of play? I must confess that I was impressed with how they handle it in this game, although obviously they didn't get the W, but they gave the Vols all they could handle. And who knows, he may like it and adapt it into his system! (*cough* *cough*)

While there was no Dane Bradshaw (author of Vertical Leap: Inside the Rise of Tennessee Basketball), Bruce Pearl has waves and waves of players to come off the bench, including his own son, and the now slimmer 7-footer Brian Williams (not of NBC News). Obviously Lofton is the star who appears to be going through a slump (for his standards/expectations), just like Ramar Smith. Of couse part of the "slump" is the clueless play by play and highlight announcers who think a player's performance is judged by looking at the box score and if it's under 20 points for a star, well, he must be struggling.



With so many cable, satellite and internet outlets broadcasting college basketball games, it must be a bull market for basketball analysts. Which perhaps explains why Versus picked former Ohio State coach Jim O'Brien as the basketball analyst for the Legends Classic.