For 30 seconds it had all the makings of another Rick Barnes victory over John Calipari inside Kentucky basketball's little shop of horrors known as Tennessee's Thompson-Boling Arena.
Once upon a time, a Southern Conference men's basketball game between East Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was a must-see matchup, regardless of where it was played - Johnson City, the Scenic City or the conference tournament in Asheville, North Carolina.
As hard as it is to believe, there may be at least one other institution in this country that's as much of a train wreck this week as the Iowa caucuses. Vanderbilt athletics, come on down.
Amid last week's Super Bowl hype, the presidential impeachment trial, the usual glut of semi-meaningful college basketball games and the worldwide mourning of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others killed in that horrific helicopter crash, it was certainly understandable to overlook the Australian Open tennis tournament.
Matt Ryan sat at the postgame interview table on the bottom floor of McKenzie Arena, his eyes lowered, his face a perfect mix of anger, frustration and regret.
Had you checked the Southeastern Conference rebounding stats for league games only prior to the start of Tuesday night's Texas A&M-Tennessee game inside Thompson-Boling Arena, you would have seen that the Aggies were being outrebounded by an average of 1.3 boards a game while the Volunteers were on the short end by 0.3.
Before anyone makes too much of this past weekend's Big 12/SEC Challenge, which wound up in a 5-5 tie, let us briefly return to last season's Challenge.
"He was supernatural." Those were the words Italian professional basketball coach Ettore Messina used to describe Kobe Bryant.
Perhaps you remember the Duracell commercial from Super Bowl XLVIII.
A couple of years ago, while looking for a sport to play as a Girls Preparatory School freshman, Allie Foropoulos called her father David to ask his thoughts about her joining the bowling team.
