If you haven’t seen it, then you’ve not flipped by ESPN in the past 48 hours.  And if you haven’t seen it, you should.  Because Joe Adams’ 60-yard punt return for a touchdown on Saturday is one of those once-in-a-season type plays that will become a fixture on the Hogs’ highlight tapes:

Not bad for a guy who’d already scored on this unbelievable return against Missouri State earlier in the season:

So maybe Saturday’s play was a twice-in-a-season type of run.

Either way, an amazing display of vision, balance and dexterity (as well as some pretty bad tackling on Tennessee’s part).

One week into the 2011 football season and the SEC already has an impressive 10-2 overall mark.  But some of those 10 wins were a lot more impressive than others.  Below you’ll find our weekly Monday morning look back at the league’s best and worst performances from the previous week.

Here goes:

1.  LSU 40, Oregon 27 at Arlington, TX — There’s no question about it, LSU’s big win at Cowboys Stadium was the most impressive performance of opening weekend.  Is Les Miles often lucky?  Is he a bit challenged when it comes to public speaking?  Does he have a hard time finding a hat that fits?  Yes, yes, yes and so what?  No coach in the SEC does a better job of consistently getting his troops to believe in his plan.  Sure Oregon turned the ball over four times.  But the Tigers took advantage of those turnovers and converted them into points… even without Jordan Jefferson and Russell Shepard dressed out.  In the face of more turmoil than most teams could withstand, Miles, his coaching staff and the Tiger players deserve some serious props for Saturday’s performance.  Just fantastic.

2.  Mississippi State 59, Memphis 14 at Memphis — Vick Ballard and Chris Relf looked ready to build on last year’s good deeds.  As a whole, Dan Mullen’s spread offense rolled up a gaudy 645 yards.  Memphis might be the weakest team on MSU’s schedule — yes, including UT-Martin — but a blowout win is a blowout win.  A good boxer knocks out the tomato cans in his way.  State did just that.  So the enthusiasm in Starkville continues to build.

3.  Florida 41, Florida Atlantic 3 at Gainesville – The athletes are there… and it looks like Will Muschamp, Dan Quinn and Charlie Weis know just how to use them.  Weis in particular got off to a hot start in his Sunshine State debut.  By constantly getting the ball t0 Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps, Weis proved what we at MrSEC have been saying for 14 games now: With properly-utilized skill players around him, John Brantley will be just fine.

4.  Alabama 48, Kent State 7 at Tuscaloosa — Ninety yards.  Ninety.  That’s all Alabama’s stingy defense allowed in its boa constrictor-like crushing of Nick Saban’s alma mater on Saturday.  That was the good part.  But while the Tide offense put plenty of points on the scoreboard, the head coach couldn’t have liked seeing his two quarterbacks toss two interceptions apiece.  Four interceptions against Kent State does not bode well for the future.

5.  Arkansas 51, Missouri State 7 at Fayetteville — New quarterback Tyler Wilson did his part (18 of 24 for 260 yards and 2 TDs), but Knile Davis’ absence was obvious.  Against the FCS-level Bears, Bobby Petrino’s team managed just 102 rushing yards on 33 attempts.  Like Bama’s four INTs above, rushing for a 3.1 yards-per-carry average against Missouri State is cause for concern heading forward.  Now, if Joe Adams can return two punts for TDs every week, the run game may not matter.  Heckuva job by Adams and the Razorback punt return unit to bring back a 61-yarder and a 69-yarder.

6.  South Carolina 56, East Carolina 37 at Charlotte, NC — The Gamecocks get the nod here because they were playing an FBS opponent.  Too bad they didn’t decide to really start playing them until after spotting ECU a 17-0 lead.  Steve Spurrier’s decision to start Connor Shaw over team leader Stephen Garcia clearly backfired.  But even after Garcia entered the game and his teammates came to life — battling back for a comfortable win — the Ol’ Ball Coach still wouldn’t give his QB credit.  In fact, he made it clear that Garcia won’t get a celebratory gameball until he throws for 300 yards someday.  Well, Spurrier needs to call Brian Billick.  That quarterback guru got tired of winning ugly with Trent Dilfer so he dumped him for a series of more highly-touted passers.  And he never won another Super Bowl.  Garcia is better than Dilfer.  He led Carolina to an SEC East title last year.  At 66 years of age you’d think Spurrier would by now understand that winning is more important than throwing for 300 yards.  He needs to live and die with his senior signal-caller.

7.  Tennessee 42, Montana 16 at Knoxville — Sophomore quarterback Tyler Bray picked up where he left off last year… winging the ball around the field with great effectiveness.  Speedy wideouts Justin Hunter and Da’rick Rogers both reached the century mark in yardage and both hauled in touchdown passes.  But the Vols’ offensive line is a cause for worry.  Bray was sacked three times and on three different occasions UT couldn’t get enough push to gain one yard against the FCS Grizzlies.  The Vols’ were even stuffed for a safety by a D-line that weighed 60 pounds per man less than UT’s O-line.  Bray can throw it, but if Tennessee can’t run it, throwing it will become tougher and tougher.

8.  Vanderbilt 45, Elon 14 at Nashville — The Commodores scored three fourth-quarter touchdowns to pull away from the Phoenix.  On the stat sheet, Elon actually out-offense’d Vandy 323 to 309.  But let’s not pick too many nits.  James Franklin got off on the right foot with a victory.  And his offense used a variety of formations throughout the night.  The Dores were at least interesting to watch.  And that’s a huge improvement over the VU offense of the past two seasons.

9.  Auburn 42, Utah State 38 at Auburn – Okay, so now maybe Tiger fans will stop complaining that their team was “disrespected” entering the season.  If Cam Newton, Nick Fairley and about 14 other starters had returned from last year’s team, AU would have been a preseason Top 5 team.  They also wouldn’t have needed two touchdowns in the last three minutes, an onside kick, and a 97-yard kick return to subdue tiny Utah State.  By game’s end, the Aggies had rolled up 448 yards to Auburn’s 364.  Disrespect?  Try reality.  The Tigers are young and inexperienced.  They’ll have growing pains.  And as Rick Pitino might say, “Cam Newton isn’t walking through that door.”

10.  Boise State 35, Georgia 21 at Atlanta, GA – Yep, we’ve got a loser ranked above a winner.  That’s because UGA lost to a Top 5 team that may wind up playing for the BCS title.  But the real story is the heat on Mark Richt.  He’s now won just 14 of his last 27 games.  Dawg fans have noticed.  Mike Bobo’s thin offensive line looks like it will be a worry spot all season.  Aaron Murray was sacked six times and without a good line in front of him, ultra-hyped tailback Isaiah Crowell sure didn’t remind anyone of Marcus Lattimore or Mike Dyer.  Oh, and the defense couldn’t keep pace with the Broncos, either.  From a fan-revolt standpoint, Richt needs a win over South Carolina on Saturday.

11.  BYU 14, Ole Miss 13 at Oxford — The Rebels lost a game they flat should have won.  Tyrone Nix’s defense looked much improved — as we expected — but Houston Nutt and David Lee had no such luck with Mississippi’s offense — which was not what we expected.  Ole Miss quarterback Zach Stoudt was strip-sacked in the 4th quarter and the ball was returned for BYU’s game-winning score.  Why Ole Miss had Stoudt back to pass on 3rd-and-27 while protecting a lead — run a draw, punt the ball! — is anyone’s guess.  Now the heat is being turned up on Nutt who is just 13 games removed from back-to-back Cotton Bowl berths.  To add injury to insult, tailback Brandon Bolden seriously injured his ankle and could miss several games.

12.  Kentucky 14, Western Kentucky 3 at Nashville, TN – Anyone who wonders why we have a victorious squad listed as having given the least impressive performance of the week… didn’t watch UK’s abysmal performance against one of the worst teams in the FBS.  Like most people outside the Bluegrass State, we thought the Cats would have a hard time replacing Randall Cobb, Derrick Locke and Mike Hartline.  We just didn’t think they’d struggle against the Hilltoppers.  At the end of three quarters, Kentucky had just 75 yards of total offense.  Yeah.  It was that bad.  Viewers needed novocaine just to watch that mess.

1.  Alabama linebacker Dont’a Hightower is now 100% back from a 2009 knee injury.

2.  Freshman O-lineman Cyrus Kouandjio is being called a prodigy.

3.  The Tide’s quarterback battle is about to take it up a notch (Stringbean).

4.  Joe Namath has actor Alec Baldwin sending naughty, pro-Bama tweets.

5.  Auburn’s football team is “Puppy-ville” this season.

6.  Tailback Mike Dyer is a backup on paper only.

7.  Barrett Trotter is ready to take the reins on The Plains.

8.  Arkansas’ De’Anthony Curtis is “thankful” to be back at running back.

9.  The Hogs are now in fine-tuning mode leading up to Saturday’s opener with Missouri State.

10.  If Texas A&M does join the SEC — and if Arkansas doesn’t leave for the Big 12 (Ha!) — will the Aggies and Razorbacks continue to play in Arlington, Texas?  (A neutral site works for Florida-Georgia.)

11.  LSU’s defense is bracing for Oregon’s up-tempo attack.

12.  Redshirt freshman running back Jakhari Gore has been getting good reviews for his mimicry of the Ducks’ LaMichael James in practice.

13.  Meanwhile, Oregon isn’t planning on changing up its D just because Jarrett Lee is getting the starting quarterback nod for the Tigers.
 
14.  Mississippi State has a big-play secondary.

15.  A former walk-on has edged out highly-touted transfer Brandon Maye for a starting linebacker spot at MSU.

16.  Dan Mullen says he’s worried about a pair of “SEC-talented” D-linemen who’ll line up for Memphis tomorrow night.

17.  New quarterback Barry Brunetti says UM’s offense “can be deadly” once everyone gets comfortable.

18.  With so many new faces in the lineup, Ole Miss fans will need a program to keep up.

19.  This writer says the Rebels need to rebound now, not later.

It’s a lovefest in the SEC these days.  Andy Kennedy and Billy Donovan are praising Kentucky and John Calipari.  Mike Anderson is tossing verbal bouquets at Cuonzo Martin.

Arkansas’ new hoops coach got to know Tennessee’s new coach when they were both coaching in the Show Me State — Anderson at Missouri, Martin at Missouri State.  Anderson was impressed:


“He’s a quality young guy working hard.  He’ll do a great job at Tennessee.  I say that because he’s like me, a character guy.  His kids are going to do all the right things on and off the floor.  They’ll play as a team.

All you’ve got to do is look at his background, where he’s from, to find out a lot more about what Cuonzo Martin is all about.  Nothing’s been given to him.”


In addition to meeting each other on the court each season, Anderson and Martin will probably cross paths often while recruiting the talent-rich Memphis area as well.

Wes Washpun — a 6-1 point guard who’s never been to Knoxville — became Cuonzo Martin’s first commitment at Tennessee over the weekend.

Martin was recruiting Washpun while he was at Missouri State.

“He told me he wouldn’t have offered me a scholarship if he didn’t think I could play at this level.”

According to University of Tennessee chancellor Jimmy Cheek, “playing by the rules,” was a key characteristic the Vols were searching for in a new basketball coach.  It’s doubtful UT meant that as a slap at Bruce Pearl as he went out the door and more likely that the school’s leadership was trying to send a message to the NCAA:

“We get it, we get it.  Don’t spank us!”

With that in mind, the Vols set out to find a new coach with a good track record, good recommendations, a willingness to take over a program that’s about to be hit by the NCAA, a willingness to try to replace the popular Pearl, AND a clean bill of health when it comes to past compliance.

The last bit is what kept UT from chasing Richmond’s Chris Mooney.  Mooney’s program was hit in 2007 with “major” violations tied to an assistant’s phone calls and texts.  Mooney fired the assistant, but the head coach was cited for failing to monitor his program. 

With the NCAA’s sword dangling by a thread above them, Tennessee officials couldn’t risk bringing in anyone with a big red X on his resume.

Enter Cuonzo Martin from Missouri State.  He had the reputation and recommendations UT was looking for (after several Tier 1 candidates said “not interested”).  But what about his NCAA history?

The Knoxville News Sentinel did some digging and found that there were two violations under Martin at his last job.  But despite the scary headline: “Records show two violations at Missouri State under Cuonzo Martin’s watch,” both violations were secondary and both were self-reported.

In other words, Martin’s about as clean as a coach can be as he arrives in Knoxville.  That’s a big plus for the Vols who go before the Committee on Infractions in June.

Of course, Pearl, too, had only secondary violations on his record, too — including having a junior over to his house at his last stop — when he arrived from UW-Milwaukee in 2005.

For those who will want to comment/email saying that Pearl was shown the door at UT last month for secondary violations, please remember that Pearl was in NCAA hot water for his cover-up of his secondary violations.  The small stuff didn’t get him… lying about the small stuff did.

Martin, obviously, will want to avoid secondary violations while Tennessee goes through a period of probation.  And if/when he doesn’t, he’ll need to fess about it and make sure minor issues don’t become major.  He can learn that lesson from his predecessor.

Tennessee has hired Cuonzo Martin from Missouri State to replace the recently fired Bruce Pearl.  Martin posted a 61-41 record in three years with the Bears.  His team won the school’s first-ever Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship this past season.

“Cuonzo is among the most promising young coaches in the game, and we are excited about the coaching ability, toughness, and energy that he brings to our program,” said UT athletic director Mike Hamilton.

Martin will inherit NCAA sanctions and probation as well as big expectations on the court as he tries to replace Pearl.

As soon as the NCAA Tournament brackets are announced each year, out come the talking heads, coaches, and fans to complain about the process and its results.  Even with three extra teams in this year’s field, the barking continues.  (As would be the case with a 128-team field, too.)

There’s an easy way to do away with the debate and disputes.  A clear-cut, proven way to end all the seed-whining, bid-complaining and conspiracy-theorizing.

Just BCS it.

BCS the whole NCAA Tournament. 

Now, personally, I think this would be a pretty crummy way of doing business because I rather like the human element playing a role in tournament selection.  Add a couple more basketball folks to the committee and I’d be quite happy with the current system.  It’s not perfect — and it’s never going to be — but for the most part it’s fair. 

Besides, if you’re Team #69 you really don’t have much to complain about because chances are you’re not going to cut down the nets anyway.  And if your team is good enough to actually compete for the title then the difference between a #3 and a #4 or a #4 and a #5 shouldn’t be that big of an obstacle to overcome.

But again, all the arguing can be KO’d by applying a BCS-style formula to the process:


Step 1: The conference tourney winners get automatic bids as they do now.

Step 2: The new formula is used to determine the remaining teams in the field.

Step 3: The field is seeded according to the formula using a standard S-curve (1-8, 2-8, 3-6, 4-5, etc).  Just to keep things neat, the play-in games would go to the eight lowest RPIs in the field with each winner moving on to play a #1 seed.


No fuss.  No muss.  And if a squad sees a conference mate in Round One or has to travel half way around the world to play, they can take it up with the computer that spits out the seedings.

Using the RPI numbers from RealTimeRPI.com as our “formula,” here’s the 2011 field and how it would have been seeded.  Realize that human error and bias has — aside from a few computer programmers — been removed from the process.  So no complaining about what you see below.  It’s all math without partiality. 

Each team’s RPI is listed in parentheses. 

Automatic bids from conference tourneys are underlined. 

Teams not in this year’s actual tournament are in bold. 

(And for the record, we’ve been working on this since Monday afternoon, but pushed up the posting time when ESPN — dang them — briefly discussed a BCS idea on “SportsCenter.”)

So there you have it.  Using an RPI formula, the field is selected and seeded without the aid of human beings.  Harvard, Cleveland State, Missouri State, St. Mary’s and Colorado State would be in while Michigan, Florida State, Clemson, Marquette and Southern Cal would be out.

As you eyeball the results, remember that the Southeast champ would face the Southwest winner and the East titlist would play West champion at the Final Four in Houston.

Like what you see?  Think folks would quietly, happily accept these results?

On Tuesday, we’ll be bringing you a comprehensive look at the resumes of each and every SEC basketball team.  Not only will you be able to compare tournament contenders with one another, but you’ll also be able to see just how bad the SEC’s bad teams were as well as just how average the league’s average squads were.

But tonight, we wanted to have a little fun with some of the teams currently sitting on the NCAA Tournament bubble.  Taking the lists compiled by bracket gurus Jerry Palm, Joe Lunardi and Andy Glockner, we’ve created one master list of 22 bubble teams who are currently competing for NCAA at-large bids.  But before we show you the list, let’s do some blind comparisons.


If only two of the five teams below could be given berths in the tournament, which two teams would you give them to?

If we were on the selection committee, Team D would definitely get a bid.  Their record and RPI are comparable to the other teams, but they played by far the toughest schedule of the bunch.  The final bid would come down to teams C and E.  One has the better RPI, the other the better SOS.  Team C has a better record by one game, so we’d hand C the final at-large bid.


(Scroll down to find out who Teams A-E are.)




In this case, Team A is Butler, Team B is Memphis, Team C is Georgia, Team D is Illinois, and Team E is Boston College.  So we would have given the slots to Illinois and Georgia.  You?


Try this one…

If we were on the selection committee, Team V would get one of our two bids despite the low strength of schedule.  Their RPI and record are far stronger than anyone else in this group.  Of the remaining teams, we’d dump Team Z because their SOS is so much lower than those teams with comparable RPI.  With their record and a slightly tougher SOS, we’d give the other bid to Team Y.


(Scroll down to find out who Teams V-Z are.)




In this case, Team V is Missouri State, Team W is Washington State, Team X is Colorado, Team Y is Nebraska, and Team Z is Alabama.  We would have extended bids to Missouri State and Nebraska.  Would you?


The blind comparisons are an interesting exercise and a good way to take bias and prejudice out of the mix.  If you want to send a couple to your friends, feel free to use the info below.  The 22 teams most commonly listed as bubble teams are as follows:

Tennessee edged Missouri State, 60-56, Wednesday to advance to the semifinals of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Preseason NIT in New York City next week.
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