The views I’m about to express are not necessarily those of anybody else but me, but they ought to be, and as a matter of fact, they probably are. The year was 1997. Tennessee basketball sucked something terrible on the court, but not in recruiting. Kevin “Mad Dog” O’Neill was pulling in some amazing classes for such a bad team that played such a horrific style. Remember how awful it was to watch O’Neill’s Tennessee teams? People have said that Tubby Smith played plow horse basketball, but Kevin O’Neill utilized an offense that wouldn’t attempt a shot until the last second of the shot clock – on every possession. Just to show you how good the 1996 Kentucky team was, they beat Tennessee by 40, which is almost impossible considering the ball control style O’Neill used. Well, O’Neill and Tennessee parted ways after the 1997 season, and the university hired Jerry Green to right the ship using O’Neill’s recruits. Tennessee finished 3rd in the East in 1998, won the division in 1999 and 2000 and went to the Big Dance all three of those years, making the round of 16 in 2000. You know the names: Tony Harris, CJ Black, Vincent Yarbrough, Ron Slay, Jon Higgins, Charles Hathaway and Isiah Victor. Marcus Haislip was a lottery pick. People thought Tennessee was here to stay. They were set for life and would emerge as a permanent power in the SEC, possibly overtaking Kentucky as the class of the conference.

Then Tony Harris injured his ankle in 2001, Tennessee forgot how to play together, they stumbled into the Dance as an 8-seed and lost. Tennessee fired Green because he was a terrible coach, then they hired an equally horrible coach in Buzz Peterson. Four years of basketball purgatory followed, as nether Green nor Peterson’s recruits could get the Vols back on the level where O’Neill’s recruits had them. The highlight of the Peterson era was one of his last actions as coach, the recruitment of Chris Lofton before his final season. Peterson’s final season coincided with an energetic coach named Bruce Pearl taking UW-Milwaukee to a magical sweet 16 run in the 2005 Tournament. Tennessee pounced on Pearl, and now here we are in the present. The point of this history lesson is that we’ve seen this before. Tennessee thought they were going to be on top of the world in the 70s with Ernie & Bernie and Ray Mears rocking the original orange blazer, and they thought they were going to be on top of the world in the late 90s and early 2000 with the Harris/Black/Yarbrough group. What happened each time? The Vols couldn’t maintain their success over a sustained period of time and they came crashing back down to earth. And if I wasn’t so cheap, I’d wager that this will once again happen to Tennessee in the near future. Sorry, UT fans, but I don’t think Bruce Pearl is good enough to stay on top of the SEC much longer.

Shield your eyes, Marian!

Let’s start with defense. You have to find a happy medium on defense. If you stress it too much, you will turn out like the last three UCLA teams that were good enough to get to the Final Four with their defense, but not good enough to win at that level with their offense. If you don’t stress it enough, you’re like this past year’s North Carolina team who shot lights out in the regionals and couldn’t stop Kansas to save their lives in the national semifinals. With Bruce Pearl’s defensive system, it’s feast or famine. Tennessee uses the full court press, which makes some UK fans giddy because it’s the system that was employed when REECHIE played, but there is a huge difference. If Tennessee can’t force a bad offensive possession or a turnover with their press, they most likely won’t force a bad possession against an efficient offense. I reference the game UT played last year against Vanderbilt when they were #1 in the country. Kevin Stallings runs the most efficient offense in the SEC, and every time Tennessee tried to make a run, the Commodores slowed the pace of the game down to make Tennessee play 25-30 seconds of solid halfcourt defense, which they could never do. Vandy had an answer for Tennessee every single time it looked like Tennessee was ready to take the momentum. All those Mason County turncoats who envy Bruce Pearl because of the full court press and it reminds them of what Kentucky used to run in the 90s couldn’t be more wrong in that assessment. Kentucky could play halfcourt defense as well as they pressed. If you need proof, pop in a tape of UK playing – guess who – Tennessee under Kevin O’Neill! My team had to play 35 seconds of solid defense against UT, and they did it every single time, as O’Neill was 0-6 against UK as Tennessee’s coach.

On offense, you have to be balanced to win. You absolutely have to have guys who can hit the three, and Tennessee has had loads of those guys in Pearl’s three years. Chris Lofton is one of the best shooters to ever play college basketball, and I hope he has enough success in Turkey that an NBA team gives him a chance next season. Jajuan “Chuck” Smith was a volume shooter if there ever was one, never gun shy, but generally effective every third or fourth game. Both Lofton and Smith thrived on hitting the impossible shot. I’ve never seen guys hit tough, contested threes at the end of the shot clock as those guys. However, there is a huge drop-off after those two in terms of good shooters. In fact, of the returning players for Tennessee, their best shooter is probably power forward Wayne Chism, but more on him later. Of their 2008 recruits, most are slashers and scorers, but only okay shooters. There definitely isn’t a Chris Lofton in this group, and I don’t even think there is a Jajuan Smith.

So, when the shooters aren’t as good as they were in years’ past, you have to take it inside some, something that has not been a staple of the Tennessee offense since Bruce Pearl arrived. It is going to be even tougher now that Duke Crews was dismissed from the team. Crews was Tennessee’s best interior player, and I don’t count Chism because he’d rather stand out by the top of the key and launch terrible threes. Brian Williams looked good at times and is a pure center in an age where that s a dying position, but he still has a long way to go. Tyler Smith could probably post up, but he’s better served taking it to the rack and providing weak side rebounding. I will readily admit that I do not know as much about Tennessee’s freshmen as I should, but the only one with decent size is Phil Jurick, who I’ve been told is “pretty good.” Still, If the threes aren’t falling, Tennessee is going to look absolutely terrible in their halfcourt offense this season. They weren’t too good in the set offense last season, often relying on Lofton and Chuck Smith to bail them out. I know Tennessee fans will tell me about how they were one of the leaders in the country in assists, and I will grant you that, Tennessee fans. I’m also aware that most of those assists came from turnovers created by the press. That’s where a player like JP Prince can thrive offensively because of his size and court vision. But he’s just not very good in a slower paced game, and neither are the rest of the Tennessee Volunteers. For whatever reason, only Billy Gillispie and Kevin Stallings have been able to figure it out.

In short, all I’m trying to say is that Tennessee’s style of play stands a very good chance of being exposed as nothing but smoke and mirrors without Chris Lofton and Chuck Smith. If Tennessee proves me wrong over the next few years, then by all means, Tennessee fans, please serve me the crow and make me look like a jackass. Still, history shows that teams will come and go in the SEC, but there will be one constant. It wasn’t Tennessee with Ernie & Bernie. It wasn’t Georgia with Dominique Wilkins. It wasn’t LSU at Dale Brown’s peak. It wasn’t Arkansas with 40 minutes of hell. It wasn’t South Carolina
w
ith their three-guard lineup. It wasn’t Tennessee with Tony Harris. And it won’t be this Tennessee team either.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and the big orange still sucks.

I am a firm believer that 75% of coaching in college basketball is recruiting, and so with that in mind, I’ll rank the 12 coaches in the Southeastern Conference based on their recruiting prowess, then I‘ll do the same with coaching prowess tomorrow. I’m still reeling from hearing Dicky Lyons Jr. at football media day, so let’s not waste anymore time.

12. Jeff Lebo (Auburn)

I don’t think Jeff Lebo is very good at all. In fact, I’m not really sure why Auburn decided to part ways with Cliff Ellis. You always knew what you would get with Ellis: a few good years followed by a few bad years, lather, rinse, repeat. With Lebo, the good year has just not happened yet, and it mainly has to do with the players he has recruited. I remember a Fox Sports broadcast on FSN where Eddie Fogler of all people said it best. I don’t remember it verbatim, but he said that if you won basketball games on athleticism alone, Auburn would win the conference every year. Those great athletes just haven’t become good basketball players yet. The Tigers have needed a shooter since Toney Douglas transferred to Florida State, and that guy has never arrived yet. At least there’s football, right?

11. Andy Kennedy (Ole Miss)

I think Andy Kennedy is a GREAT coach, but that’s for tomorrow. I give him credit for locking up Chris Warren last season on fairly short notice, because Warren’s going to be the best point guard in the conference for the next three years, but the rest of my reasons for this ranking are a bit unfair. Kennedy hasn’t been a head coach very long, and in his one year at Cincinnati, he didn’t stock that program with the type of players they had been accustomed to having. To be fair to Kennedy, UC absolutely screwed him over and they didn’t give him a chance, but unless he was the head recruiter for Bob Huggins at UC, then there’s a lot of room for improvement.

10. Darrin Horn (South Carolina)

This is another tough ranking because I have nothing on which to base it except Horn’s tenure at Western Kentucky. For Western Kentucky, Horn did a great job, always compiling the best talent in the Sun Belt. But the SEC is a different animal, and Horn has an additional uphill battle to climb because Oliver Purnell has finally gotten the recruiting ball rolling at Clemson and he’s racking up the in-state recruits. Horn hasn’t picked up any huge recruits at this point in his tenure, but it hasn’t been long, so my message to the Cock fans is patience.

9. Dennis Felton (Georgia)

Dennis Felton picks up good recruits, but that isn’t his problem. If you’ve followed college basketball news, you might know that Georgia had to kick another one off the team this summer. This is the problem Dennis Felton has faced at Georgia, and this is why he isn’t higher on my list – he can’t keep guys on his team. Has he ever heard of a background check? I think he has one of the best freshmen n the conference this year in big man Howard Thompkins, but I hope the kid can stay out of trouble for Felton’s sake. Also, the guys he keeps on his teams are clumsy oafs who hurt other players, which is another knock in my book.

8. Mark Gottfried (Alabama)

For all the crap I give Mark Gottfried as a coach (all of it deserved, by the way), he’s actually a really smart recruiter. He gets almost all of his talent from Alabama and Mississippi, which is good for him because those states produce some of the best players in the country every year. Just look at this list of guys he’s gotten: Rod Grizzard, Erwin Dudley, Kenny Walker, Maurice Williams, Gerald Wallace, Chuck Davis, Kennedy Winston, Ron Steele, Richard Hendrix and Jamychal Green. That’s solid, folks, and every one of them was near his backyard. In other conferences, this would garner a higher ranking, but the SEC has some better recruiters.

7. Trent Johnson (LSU)

I give Johnson points because I believe he was the head recruiter for Mike Montgomery all those years Montgomery was at Stanford, then when he took the Nevada job, he set that program up for a good run with his recruits. Finally, when he came back to Stanford, he picked up the Lopez twins and brought Stanford back to where they were when he was on the staff. Getting some of the classes he got at Stanford with that school’s academic requirements is pretty impressive. I deduct points from Johnson because when he took the LSU job, J’Mison Morgan, their prized recruit from Texas, decommitted immediately and went to UCLA. Something’s not right if an LSU coach can’t lock up a Texas guy.

6. Kevin Stallings (Vanderbilt)

What Stallings does at Vanderbilt is amazing. The school doesn’t even have an athletics program, and he has started to being in some incredible classes. I don’t know how they’ll do at Vandy, but Stallings has a solid formula going: recruit shooters. Have you ever noticed the insane number of shooters the Commodores have every year? This isn’t a coincidence. A lot of the top AAU camps have been ruined by the popularity of the And1 Tour, and the shooters get left out, so they fly under the radar and end up at Vanderbilt and Butler. It’s a revolving door of 3-4 shooters that come and go each year, none better than R&B superstar Shan(e) Foster.

5. John Pelphrey (Arkansas)

John is in the same boat as Darrin Horn, having to adjust to the transition from a mid-major school to a major one. When Pelphrey was at South Alabama, he got quality athletes, but not on the same caliber as what Horn was doing at WKU. Pelphrey has been at Arkansas for over a calendar year now, and he has done a great job at Arkansas, locking up Michael Sanchez, Rotnei Clarke and Courtney Fortson, all of whom were considering Kentucky at one point. John was an assistant to Billy Donovan for ages, so he knows how to close the deal on recruits, and while Arkansas will probably struggle this year, this might be the last year they struggle for quite a while.

4. Bruce Pearl (Tennessee)

I hope Tennessee fans come on here and accuse me of blasphemy like they do on TCP when somebody even suggests that Bruce Pearl isn’t the very best in the world at most things. I don’t care. Bruce Pearl is a very good recruiter, and he is 0-1 against Billy Gillispie for recruits where both parties showed marked interest (I don’t count Scotty Hopson or Bobby Maze because I’m not sure UK was as interested in those two as people were led to believe). Also, Tennessee fans (especially the citizens of Mason County) were so convinced that Pearl recruited Chris Lofton that they held a ceremony for him in downtown Maysville, painted the town orange and named him an honorary Kentucky Colonel. If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I think this is the worst thing to ever happen in the world. Bruce has done very well, though, especially in picking up transfers.

3. Rick Stansbury (Mississippi State)

I’ll be blunt here: Nobody knows how to cheat and not get caught better than Rick Stansbury. I haven’t been to Starkville, MS, but from what I’ve been told, there’s a Kroger, a Pizza Hut, a couple of stoplights and an SEC university. The basketball team has next to no tradition, yet Stansbury has pulled in some unbelevable classes, mainly by using the AAU circuits, which are ruining the game. In the original recruiting ploy to secure a commitment from Scotty Hopson, I’m pretty sure that Stansbury signed several of his AAU teammates. Some call it conquering the recruiting machine, I call it shady, but except for the Hopson situation, it’s worked to perfection for State.

2. Billy Gillispie (Kentucky)

Really, this is more like 1A. In the first month of his tenure, Coach Gillispie took Patrick Patterson from the vile clutches of Duke and Florida. Then he swooped in and stole DeAndre Liggins from Kansas and Memphis. T
he
n he took on Bruce Pearl one-on-one for the services of Darius Miller and emerged victorious. Many more recruiting triumphs followed. I don’t need to run down the list. A new player emerges on the radar seemingly every other day. I think Billy Gillispie is the hardest working recruiter in college basketball, and after a couple of years, he’ll surely be at the top of this list. But for now, this guy gets to remain on top of the list.

1. Billy Donovan (Florida)

It’s just too hard to argue against Billy Donovan being the best recruiter in the SEC. Other than Roy Williams and maybe Leonard Hamilton, I think he may very well be the best recruiter in the nation. I’m not sure anybody is better at closing the deal on a guy, and he has been able to pick up guys from South Dakota (Mike Miller), New Hampshire (Matt Bonner), Dominican Republic (Al Horford) and even Denmark (Christian Drejer). He gets guys who fit his style, as demonstrated by his 2004 class that won consecutive titles. Since those guys left, all he’s done is reload (at least according to ranking, though I think this year’s class and last year’s class were both a tad overrated). I can’t imagine him doing anything less, unless he wants to be an NBA coach for another week.

There’s the list. Come back tomorrow for the X’s and O’s part.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, while I’m still reeling from what DLJ said at media day, that’s okay because Cosmo says it’s natural.