Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall has a mostly new group of players to work with as he prepares to begin his first season leading the Vols basketball team.Read moreKentucky unanimous No. 1 in SEC media poll
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - His Volunteers may be the media's pick to finish next-to-last in the 14-team Southeastern Conference this season, but first-year Tennessee basketball coach Donnie Tyndall has no illusions about his fan base's patience.
"Everywhere I go, people are so nice," said Tyndall during the league's basketball media event on Wednesday.
"They tell me they're behind me 100 percent. I'm their guy. But I watched how upset some of them got when we lost to Florida by one point (in football) and Butch (Jones) is in his second year. The fans are great, the best I've ever seen, but they expect you to win, just like everywhere else."
Yet even the Big Orange Nation is likely to give Tyndall a pass this winter as he attempts to mesh together four returning scholarship players with two walk-ons and nine newcomers.
While Kentucky is a unanimous preseason pick to win the SEC and has five players on the SEC's first and second-team all-league teams, while Florida is ranked in the top 10 nationally and Georgia is picked fifth in the league, Tyndall may need name tags to know whom he's coaching.
"When you go to the Sweet 16, as this program did last year, expectations are high," the coach said. "Then you only have four returning players. Basically, we're in a rebuilding mode."
It might have been different if Cuonzo Martin hadn't unexpectedly departed for California after ending a coaching flirtation with Marquette. Never comfortable in former coach Bruce Pearl's shadow, Martin grew tired of always being compared to the immensely popular Pearl, who's now back in the SEC at Auburn. When an online petition to "Bring Back Bruce" garnered over 35,000 signatures before Pearl took the AU job, Martin was good as gone.
"After the season, when there were rumors that (Cuonzo) was going to Marquette, I had someone call me and tell me that Tennessee might be contacting me," said Tyndall. "But when that fell through, I totally anticipated being back at Southern Miss."
But then Martin took the Cal position, which was a lateral move at best, and Tyndall was ready, even if at least three players expected to return -- Darius Thompson, A.J. Davis and Quinton Chievous -- unexpectedly moved on.
"I was surprised," said junior wing Armani Moore of the defections. "But it's a new stage of life. It's time for us to start our own journey and be leaders."
That journey on the court is expected to look much different than Martin's nightly determination to grind down the opposition with physical man-to-man defense and patient offense.
"We were man-to-man 90 percent of the time last year," said Moore. "It's more match-up zone this year. We want to speed teams up. It'll be more run-and-gun, which is what I've played my whole life."
Added Josh Richardson, the expected leader of this group: "We can disrupt a lot of teams. I remember Coach Martin's first year, when we were picked next to last and we finished tied for second. I think we're capable of beating a whole lot of people this year, too."
That's exactly what the tenacious Tyndall wants to hear.
"You like people to say that a team embodies its coach," he said. "I've gotten where I've gotten by trying to outwork people, to be a grinder. Be tough and gritty, a scrapper. That's what I most want to see from my team."
What Big Orange fans may not see as much of is the orange blazer first worn by Pearl during UT's games against Vanderbilt and Kentucky as a tribute to former Vols coach Ray Mears. Martin continued the brief tradition. Tyndall isn't so sure.
"I've got to make some decisions," he said. "The orange blazer doesn't make me look like I thought it would. I'll wear it against Vanderbilt. I'm still trying to decide about the Kentucky game."
It has been a daily grind from the moment he was hired last spring, everything from media responsibilities to speaking engagements to recruiting.
"When I was at Morehead State, the media responsibilities and speaking engagements died down after a month," he said. "At Southern Miss they were gone after three months. I've been here six months and it still hasn't slowed down. No days off. No down time. But that's part of the business, and I'm so blessed to be here."
To that end, he looked out over the media thong and said, "The whole time I'm here and talking to you, I'm thinking about what I need to do when I get back to school."
Because the business of rebuilding a program at UT's level is a full-time grind.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.