KNOXVILLE — In a few hours the Tennessee basketball team would play what Vols coach Bruce Pearl would later term, “Our most important game of the year.”
But at 4 o’clock Wednesday afternoon, Pearl wasn’t so much worried about No. 21 Memphis as his own vacillating Vols. Would they be the vicious Vols that rolled to a 7-0 start and victories over highly ranked Villanova and Pitt? Or would they be the vapid Vols who basically slept through mind-blowing losses to Charlotte and College of Charleston and fell apart against Oakland and Southern Cal?
“It’s time to get the swagger back,” Pearl said to junior guard Scotty Hopson during UT’s pregame shootaround. “It’s time to get back to playing Tennessee basketball.”
If Wednesday night told us anything it’s that Pearl’s Vols are still capable of playing like the torrid team that embarrassed Pitt in its own town (though not its own arena) and humbled Villanova inside Madison Square Garden.
Leading by as many as 36 points (91-55), the Vols got more than their swagger back against Memphis in their 104-84 victory. They regained the respect of such national basketball analysts as Jimmy Dykes, who looked at a stat sheet that showed 10 Vols playing 14 or more minutes and said, “Tennessee clearly has the deepest team in the Southeastern Conference. If they’re now the most mature, they should win it.”