Tennessee head basketball coach Donnie Tyndall yells to his players in Knoxville.Is it too early to trumpet Tennessee's Donnie Tyndall for Southeastern Conference coach of the year?
OK, so it's a long college basketball season and most teams, including Tyndall's 4-3 Volunteers, are only a quarter done. Good as it was, Sunday's 67-55 victory over then-15th ranked Butler on UT's home court probably shouldn't deliver Donnie Knoxville so lofty an honor when it's supposed to be based on a full season's worth of work.
But how many other guys in their first year on the job can knock off a top-15 foe by double figures with a team picked to finish 13th in the 14-team SEC? Yes, it's fair to argue that the Big Orange should at least earn an NIT berth before we anoint Tenn-dall the second coming of Bruce Pearl, or at least Ray Mears.
However, if the season ended today with UT having already whipped dangerous Kansas State and Butler, can anyone think of a more deserving SEC coach-of-the-year winner on the court than the new Vols boss? Especially given the fact that he's attempting to integrate eight mostly unsung newcomers into a roster that might not have scared a fraternity team at season's dawn?
Of course, all this assumes that Tyndall still will be the UT coach at the close of the season.
And that's where all of this really gets interesting and worrisome and downright uncomfortable for all involved -- from the coach to UT athletic director Dave Hart, to the players and to the fans.
Because as good as he's been on the floor, Tyndall has become a giant question mark off it, his possible NCAA violations at former employer Southern Miss -- plus the quick exit last month of UT aides Adam Howard and R.J. Rush, who both came with Tyndall from Southern Miss -- leaving many to wonder if Donnie Knoxville will become Donnie Pink Slip before March.
After all, when you've just begun to escape the NCAA shadow created by Pearl's antics, the last thing you need to is to have a hire once removed from that mess give the NCAA reason to return to your campus, even if Tyndall or his assistants hardly have had time to repeat the wrongs that dogged their previous tenures at Southern Miss and Morehead State.
Yet there's also no denying Tenn-dall's coaching skill, both in terms of strategy and as he's related his tough-minded, disciplined philosophy to his players.
Just give a listen to first-year Vol Kevin Punter, who ably backed up Josh Richardson's 20 points with 18 of his own in the Butler win: "It hurts when teams like that (Butler) hit 3s. It kind of takes the life out of you. But you've just got to stay with it if you want to win. We stayed with it, kept grinding, they coughed it up a few times and we capitalized."
Stay with it. Keep grinding. It's this defense first, last and always mantra that has propelled Tyndall to four years of 24 or more wins in his eight Division I seasons. It's this style that now gives the Big Orange Nation a fascinating Comparative Scores talking point, should it want to go there.
The talking point is this: No. 1, unbeaten Kentucky defeated North Carolina 84-70 on Saturday. Tennessee beat Butler by 12 on Sunday. On Nov. 26, the Bulldogs stunned the Tar Heels, 74-66, which means the Vols could theoretically shock the Cats by six points.
Not that it figures to be that easy when Big Blue blows into Knoxville on Feb. 17. UK is long, strong, deep and relatively experienced for a John Calipari-coached team. And this is also the same UT bunch that's lost to Virginia Commonwealth, Marquette and Kansas (by 15 points), which brings up a less palatable comparative score for the Big Orange Nation, since UK KO'd KU by 32 points in mid-November.
Tyndall even seemed to acknowledge both the known and unknown with his team's potential when he said late Sunday afternoon, "We know it won't be like this every night, but ... our play just wears on people."
It certainly wore on Butler, which led by nine at halftime and by 12 early in the final half before losing by 12.
Or as Butler forward Kameron Woods told the media, "I just feel like we got out-toughed in the second half."
Yet seven games into Tyndall's tenure, the toughest challenge may be to guess correctly how all this plays out. Much as with Pearl early on, this type of success is sure to endear him swiftly to the fans, making it much tougher for Hart to cut him loose over past NCAA violations should the need arise.
And given the Vols' relative success in the past at dodging the NCAA's most lethal weapons, it's also not impossible to imagine the school encouraging the worst of this to quietly disappear with the promise Tyndall will be a model citizen from this point forward.
The only thing that seems certain at the moment is to focus on a quote from interim Butler coach Chris Holtmann, who said of the Vols, "They play a unique style."
If nothing else, the school has quite a unique situation on its hands as it weighs whether Tenn-dall's coaching talent is worth the headache of dealing with Tyndall's baggage.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.