This should be the best regular-season moment Tennessee men's basketball has experienced since Bruce Pearl was painting his chest at Lady Vols games and painting a masterpiece of a 2007-08 regular season by lifting UT to its only No. 1 ranking in school history.
It should be that way because much as Pearl repeatedly shocked the Southeastern Conference from the time he arrived in Knoxville in the spring of 2005 until he departed in the spring of 2011, new coach Donnie Tyndall shockingly has UT all alone in second place in the SEC after being picked 13th among 14 teams in the preseason.
And never have his coaching skills been more impressive than during Tuesday night's road victory at South Carolina, which may have been the most eye-opening of the Tyn Men's wins to date, given that they shot better than 55 percent from the field in general and 3-point line in particular.
Yet before the Big Orange Nation could think "NCAA Tournament," they had to swallow "NCAA investigation" due to an apparent dumpster fire Tyndall left behind at Southern Miss when he took the UT gig last March.
With words sure to both sadden and anger every citizen of the Big Orange Nation that cares the slightest bit for hoops, Southern Miss announced on Tuesday that it will not participate in postseason competition this season as a result of -- drum roll, please -- "an ongoing university and NCAA inquiry of the basketball program related to the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years."
If you're waiting for the other adidas sneaker to drop, here it is: Tyndall was the coach at Southern Miss from April 2012 to April 2014.
So regardless of what he's willing to admit to or deny, everything the NCAA gumshoes are investigating happened on Tyndall's watch.
And unlike those not-so-long-ago days when head coaches could plead ignorance of such things, citing that their lone mistake was hiring some rogue assistant who stabbed them in the back, the NCAA now holds head coaches responsible unless they can prove they educated the assistant against such violations before he broke the rules.
To that end, Tyndall's UT contract allows the school to fire him if he's found guilty of NCAA level I or level II violations "whether the conduct occurred during (Tyndall's) employment with the university or another NCAA member institution."
Beyond that, don't expect Southern Miss's self-imposed postseason ban to sway the NCAA toward leniency for either the Eagles or Tyndall. Southern Miss is awful. The Eagles are 5-11 overall and 0-5 in Conference USA. Banning themselves from the postseason is as hollow as Bill Belichick's soul. It would be like me banning myself from joining Augusta National. Or buying a Lamborghini. Or refusing a date with Halle Berry because I'm happily married.
(Brief side note: If New England's Deflate-gate can be traced back to Beli-cheat, he should be suspended from coaching the Super Bowl and the Patriots should be docked their first- and second-round 2015 draft picks with no ability to make trades to acquire someone else's first- or second-round picks.)
But where were we? Oh, yeah. The Beli-cheat of college basketball coaches -- Donnie Tyndall. Because much as Beli-cheat's reputation was permanently damaged by 2007's Spygate incident with the New York Jets, Tyndall's already been on the wrong end of an NCAA investigation of Morehead State, where he coached before moving on to Southern Miss.
Tyndall managed to pass that one off on a rogue booster. But with his second Division I stop bringing a second NCAA investigation, he'll now be presumed guilty until proven innocent, which is a far tougher case to win.
This doesn't mean Tyndall's days in Knoxville are necessarily near an end. The NCAA has often appeared as toothless as a denture wearer in recent years, either unable or unwilling to lock up the bad guys.
If former Miami and Missouri coach and current Tulsa boss Frank Haith could get nothing tougher than a five-game suspension against a Cupcake Row of stiffs for his misleading the NCAA about serious violations at Miami, everyone's got a chance to skate.
But Tyndall's already watched two of his assistants at Southern Miss resign from his UT staff about the time news of the Eagles' troubles became public in November. And not four years have passed since UT was dealing with its own basketball violations under Pearl. Now Southern Miss's self-imposed postseason ban without so much as a formal NCAA letter of charges might be too much for even Teflon Tennessee to smooth over.
Said Tyndall after the South Carolina win regarding Southern Miss: "All I can say is I've cooperated 100 percent and if I need to, I will continue to do that."
What UT basketball needs is to get this mess 100 percent behind it as quickly as possible, lest the future of the program appear as deflated as New England's footballs.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.