Not surprisingly, Cuonzo Martin has reiterated what a Tennessee spokesman said last night: He’s not leaving Knoxville for Illinois:


“We’re building something special here.  I enjoy my job at Tennessee, and I’m looking forward to bigger things next season.”


And about that CSNChicago report he and Illinois shared mutual interest?  “There was never anything to it,” he told The Knoxville News Sentinel.

According to CBSSports.com’s Brett McMurphy, junior Ohio guard DJ Cooper has told the network that two coaches contacted him after his freshman season and tried to lure him into a transfer.  One coach was Baylor’s Scott Drew.  The other was ex-Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl.

In case you’re wondering — or haven’t been keeping up with the Vanderbilt v. Maryland case currently being hashed out by the ACC and SEC — it’s not kosher for the coach of one school to contact a player at another school in order to elicit a transfer.  In fact, it’s a secondary NCAA violation (though it seems like player-poaching should land more in the “major” violation category).

Cooper was the MAC’s Freshman of the Year in 2010.  After advancing to the Sweet Sixteen last night, the player revealed that Baylor and Tennessee came after him.  (Maybe Baylor president Kenneth Starr can investigate those claims.)

Cooper’s parents — Donell and Dionne — backed up their son’s story and suggested a few more coaches contacted them as well.  The father said Pearl “tried the hardest” to talk his son into leaving Ohio.  But, “It’s hard to say how many there were contacting us.  It was shocking to me that so many coaches would do that behind a school’s back.”

“It was surprising, being my first experience, that schools were wanting me to come play for their programs,” the younger Cooper said.  He claimed that he never considered leaving the Bobcat program.

Baylor’s Drew told The New York Times last night that once Cooper signed with Ohio, “I never talked with the mom or the dad or DJ.”

This isn’t a concern for Tennessee moving forward as Pearl has already been dismissed for NCAA rules violations.  The ex-coach — who’s actually a very good co-host on Sirius/XM radio — was hit with a three-year “show cause” penalty by the NCAA.

UPDATE — Jimmy Hyams of WNML-AM/FM in Knoxville has tweeted that Pearl — like Drew — denies the charge.  Tennessee knocked Ohio from the NCAA Tournament in 2010 and Pearl claims he complimented Cooper after the game, but: “I never reached out to him, I never had contact with him or his family.”

It must not be easy running the NIT.

Since the NCAA took the 75-year-old tournament over just a few short seasons ago, the tourney has improved.  A great deal, in fact. 

In came a true bracket with actual seedings.  Out went the ol’ wait-til-the-first-round-is-over-and-then-match-two-teams-together-that-will-boost-attendance nonsense.

In came actual home court advantage for the higher-seeded teams (when possible).  All regular-season conference champs who lost their league tourneys would get automatic bids, too, cutting down on the number of .500 power-conference teams and ensuring some better basketball (though with slightly smaller schools).

But the NIT also inked a deal with the devil, er, I mean ESPN.  If you’ve read this site for long you know that we believe — like, oh, so many others — that ESPN embodies the greatest conflict of interest imaginable.  They own sports and yet they’re supposed to honestly cover sports at the same time.  And in owning the TV rights to the NIT’s games, they’re able to hold final sway over the how the tournament actually operates.  Might as well call it the ESPN Tournament (and don’t think that’s not coming).

Case in point: Tennessee and Middle Tennessee State won their first-round NIT games on Tuesday night.  All day Wednesday, they wondered if they would play on Thursday or Sunday… with one possibility being an 11am ET tip time.  Boy howdy, that would have done wonders for ticket sales in the Bible Belt.

By Wednesday afternoon, the NCAA had listed the game as a Friday matchup on its official website.  But behind the scenes, UT officials knew they didn’t have access to their own arena for Thursday or Friday.  (Another problem with the NIT, schools start scheduling events for their gyms as soon as the regular-season ends.)  So not until midnight this morning did Vol fans learn that their squad would host MTSU on Monday — which was never really discussed as a possibility — at 7pm.

ESPN wanted to wait until all of the first-round games were complete before slotting all of its second-round matchups.  OK.  But seeing as how the times were announced immediately at midnight, it sure looks like some game times could have been announced much sooner.  That would have at least allowed some schools schools and their fans to better plan for those second-round games.

As it turns out, the SEC got lucky because its game will air on ESPN (not 2 or the U) at 7pm.  That’s good exposure for the last remaining league team in the NIT field.  But it was a ridiculous wait to learn of that fact.

Oh, and that 11am Sunday slot?  Congrats to Drexel and Northern Iowa.

Last night, it was reported that Tennessee’s second-round NIT matchup with Middle Tennessee State would be played either tomorrow night or — get this — Sunday morning at 11am ET.

Would not the buckle of the Bible Belt would blow completely off with such a start time?

For much of the day, the NCAA’s official website had listed the UT-MTSU game on its Thursday rundown of games with a time to be determined.  Now it’s listing the game as a Friday affair, but the tip time is still a mystery.

Whether the game remains a Friday game, moves back to Thursday — a little late for that it would seem — or is pushed to the weekend remains to be seen.  But a basketball game played at 11am on a Sunday morning?  Talk about March Madness.

Last month, Tennessee’s Derek Dooley made a passionate case for the benefits and necessity of oversigning in college football.  At the time, the former Nick Saban aide said, “I know Nick Saban feels the same way I feel.”  (I’m sure Saban appreciates his former protege speaking for him.)

Well, Michael Carvell of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution set to see if any other current SEC coaches would back oversigning — and back Dooley — so strongly.  The results?  Not really.


Georgia’s Mark Richt: 

“I don’t want to get into that discussion.  It really is a moot point.  It doesn’t matter.  We know what the rules are now, so let’s go by them and get after it.”


Kentucky’s Joker Phillips:

“I know some of the positives with oversigning.  But you had a couple of negative things that happened.  And those negative things happened to 18-year-olds.  It didn’t happen to us coaches.  The thing the school presidents got upset about were happening to 18-year-old kids.  It was not their fault, you know?  When college coaches negatively affect the lives of a couple of 18-year-olds… that’s why it was blown up because of who it was.”


Texas A&M’s Kevin Sumlin:

“If everything is handled upfront the right way… and it’s explained to a young man where he is in the pecking order and he has not qualified… then I agree some (with Dooley)… It’s the communication that comes along with oversigning or the lack of communication that can get you in trouble.  It was never a problem for us at Houston and it won’t be a problem for us here… because all those issues will be communicated upfront with a player, his parents, and his coaches.”


Saban did not respond to Carvell’s request for an interview.

Now, in fairness to Dooley, all 12 SEC coaches voted last spring in favor of keeping oversigning as it was.  And even Phillips — if you read The AJC’s full piece right here — said that he really liked the old rules, even though he’s now ready to move on under the new one.

But in terms of perception, you have one SEC coach — Dooley — who’s still strongly defending oversigning while the rest of his fraternity seems to be moving on.  Even if they agree with him, they’re not making a similar case with similar gusto:


* Richt says he’s ready to make the new rule work. 

* Phillips says an 18-year-old kid should come first and that it wasn’t coaches who were being hurt by the rule. 

* Sumlin says it’s all about communication and that’s not a problem for him. 

* And Saban has been wise enough — at least so far — to not speak out loudly in favor of something that so many others are flatly against.


For now, Dooley remains the league’s — and therefore the nation’s — loudest proponent for oversigning.

The Tennessee basketball team entered last night’s first-round NIT game with a four-game losing streak in that postseason event.  Not anymore.

Cuonzo Martin’s top-seeded Vols dispatched tiny Savannah State 65-51 last night without the aid of their top player, forward Jeronne Maymon.  Maymon — a second-team All-SEC selection — suffered a bruised knee in the SEC Tournament and will be evaluated day-to-day moving forward.

The question for any team entering the NIT is whether or not they even want to be there.  Judging from UT’s defensive effort and their fights for loose balls, the Volunteers definitely want to keep playing.  Junior Skylar McBee admitted as much after the contest:


“Anytime you’re playing in March, I think it’s special.  We’re in this to win, no matter what tournament it is and no matter what game it is.”


The next game for Tennessee should be considerably tougher.  Middle Tennessee State — winners over Marshall last night and Sun Belt Conference regular season champs — will be the next squad to visit Knoxville.  MTSU has an RPI nearly 30 slots higher than UT’s and they beat UCLA and Ole Miss during the regular season.  They also put a scare into Vanderbilt before losing by seven. 

The Blue Raiders are the #4 seed in UT’s region and losing to an in-state foe at home — even a pretty good one — would be a bad way to end a season that turned out a lot better than the preseason experts had projected.  Vol fans need to hope Maymon’s knee will be ready to go when the NIT decides to send MTSU their way.  (NIT second-round dates are yet to be determined.)

Tennessee saw a six-year NCAA Tournament streak come to an end yesterday, but Cuonzo Martin isn’t complaining about it.  That’s because he knows that he took over a program in disarray.

Bruce Pearl had shockingly turned the Vol program into a national power, but through a series of bad decisions he brought the roof down on himself over what would have been — if handled properly — a secondary NCAA violation. 

In turn, Martin was left with a thin roster comprised of players who — for the most part — hadn’t played much or hadn’t played well under Pearl last season.  On top of that, Martin had to get those players to buy in to a completely different style of basketball than the one they’d signed on to play.

That starting point has apparently helped Martin deal with the fact that his team isn’t going to the Big Dance:


“I go back to the fact that it’s a body of work.  We got out of the gates slow, did a great job down the stretch (and) for me as a coach, I can’t be upset with our guys because I saw the progress they made.  Unfortunately we didn’t do the job up front, and I say unfortunate because we didn’t win games.  (The players) were also learning in the system trying to find their way how to compete and how to play hard, so it’s hard as a coach to be upset with your guys.

Now you bring me a year from now and we’re standing here and that happens, it’d be a problem.  Those guys understand the system, they know what’s expected and the level we have to play to.  Barring injury, we should be an NCAA Tournament team next year.”


There’s no danger in Martin saying that, in raising expectations for himself in 2013.  Tennessee fans will no doubt have an “NCAAs or bust” mentality next year anyway.

Just days after losing safeties coach and recruiting coordinator Terry Joseph to Nebraska, it appears Derek Dooley has once again — barring any more departures — completed his coaching staff. 

The University of Tennessee has announced the hiring of Josh Conklin, who is currently serving as the defensive coordinator at The Citadel.  Conklin also coached safeties at the Charleston school.

Prior to The Citadel, Conklin coached at Wofford.

Yesterday we told you that former UT assistant Eric Russell had admitted that job security issues led him to leave the Volunteer staff for a spot on Washington State’s coaching team.  We suspect five of the other six Dooley assistants to leave Knoxville this offseason — one has retired — left for similar reasons.

So who might be willing to join a staff that could be blown to smithereens at the end of the season?  Let’s see:


* Conklin gets a big step up in moving from The Citadel to Tennessee.

* Sal Sunseri went from linebackers coach at Alabama to SEC defensive coordinator with his jump.

* Derrick Ainsley is a former Alabama grad assistant under Sunseri who had been in his first full-time job (at Central Florida) for less than three months before joining the Vols.

* Special teams/tight ends coach Charlie Coiner coached at North Carolina during their troubled 2010 season before sitting out the 2011 campaign.

* Offensive line coach Sam Pittman was also on North Carolina’s staff, but he stuck with the Tar Heels until the whole group was blown up at the end of this past season.

* Defensive line coach John Palermo has coached at some big name programs, but he moves to UT after a two-year stint at Middle Tennessee State.

* Finally, new running backs coach Jay Graham made the move from South Carolina to work at his alma mater.


It’s quite clear the top names in the biz weren’t too keen on climbing aboard the SS Dooley as it sails into a make-or-break 2012 season.  That’s not to say the current crew can’t win, but it’s understandable if Vol fans are a little underwhelmed at the moment.

Since a season-ending loss at Kentucky last November, the Tennessee football program has hemorrhaged some seven assistant football coaches from a staff that only runs nine-deep.  Former Vol tight ends and special teams coach Eric Russell — who left UT to join ex-boss Mike Leach at Washington State — undoubtedly spoke for many of his former co-workers when he said an uncertainty in the staff’s status contributed to his departure:


“I think at Tennessee, it was going to come down to how many games you won the next year, and unfortunately nobody’s got a crystal ball.  I tried to take the sentimental stuff out of it.  A chance to be an assistant head coach and concentrate purely on special teams was a little bit of a unique situation.”


Let’s play a little game.  Let’s say you’re an assistant football coach.  You can either:


A.  Stay in your current job on a one-year contract knowing that if your squad doesn’t win seven or eight games for some reason, you’re a goner at year’s end.

or…

B.  You can re-start your coaching clock by going to another school and getting more guaranteed time (or money should you be blown up after a year).


I think it’s pretty clear that Option B is the safest, smartest bet.  Which explains — in part — why several Derek Dooley aides have vamoosed to other schools for job titles that would have to be considered even.

The fact that Dooley — like Alabama’s Nick Saban, his old boss — has a reputation for not being the best guy to work for likely also added to the mass exodus from Knoxville.  Of course, in Saban’s case, his assistants are paid handsomely and have plenty of security via their tremendous success. 

That’s not been the case at Tennessee under Dooley.

Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley has now lost seven of nine.  That’s assistant coaches this offseason, not the “Star Trek: Voyager” character named Seven of Nine (which gives us an excuse to drive up pageviews with a shot of Jeri Ryan).

According to VolQuest.com — the Rivals site covering Tennessee — safeties coach and recruiting coordinator Terry Joseph has confirmed to that site that he has accepted the position of secondary coach with Nebraska.  (Sorry, but that story is behind a paywall.)  That means Dooley will soon have to find his seventh new assistant since the end of last season.