Patterico's Pontifications

1/10/2010

NCAA Basketball: Kansas vs Tennessee

Filed under: Sports — DRJ @ 8:58 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Playing 3 walk-ons, the No. 16 Tennessee Volunteers upset the No. 1 Kansas Jayhawks 76-68 in Knoxville:

“Kansas’ Tyshawn Taylor stole the ball and dished it to Brady Morningstar, who hit a 3-pointer with 1:14 left to cut Tennessee’s lead to 71-68.

Skylar McBee, one of three walk-ons who saw playing time for Tennessee, answered with his own 3 as the shot clock expired.

“McBee’s shot was worth how many hours in the gym?” [Tennessee Coach Bruce] Pearl said. “When other kids were doing everything else, you could see McBee in the gym practicing all night long. It paid off—the beautiful thing about sports.”

The Volunteers prevailed despite recent suspensions, dismissals, injuries, and today’s foul trouble:

“It was the Vols’ first game after Pearl dismissed Tyler Smith on Friday, a week after the senior was arrested on misdemeanor gun and drug charges. Tennessee was also playing without Cameron Tatum, Melvin Goins and Brian Williams, who were arrested Jan. 1 with Smith.

But Tennessee, who had already lost two players before the season started, played even more short-handed than that. Starters Wayne Chism and J.P. Prince found themselves in foul trouble early and both spent more than half of the game on the bench.”

Kansas has looked shaky recently but it was still exciting to see three walk-ons help their team beat a number 1 ranked team, especially McBee’s game-deciding 3-pointer. You don’t often see that in NCAA Division I play.

— DRJ

4 Responses to “NCAA Basketball: Kansas vs Tennessee”

  1. Thanks for covering this. It’s nice to see the kids who work so hard (and stay out of trouble) rewarded for their efforts.

    Pearl is a helluva coach.

    The UT football team also played a bunch of walk-ons (11 of them) in games this year and came within a last second field goal of beating the eventual national champions.

    That’s why college sports are so great.

    Voluble (1e2a18)

  2. Rock-chauk Chicken hawk

    Screw KU!!

    Scott Jacobs (d027b8)

  3. It was a very exciting game; it looked like KU was going to come back in the end and beat us, but the guys just hung on for the win.

    McBee’s shot was the shot of the year so far 🙂

    Lord Nazh (8d682b)

  4. As the great philosopher Frank Zappa once said…”There is more stupid in the universe than hydrogen. And it has a longer shelf life.”

    political agnostic (0602ef)


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