Transcript
Speaker: Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode, guys.
Speaker: Just want to let you all know I recorded this December 11th with Rocky Top Insider Zone and one of my good friends from college, Ryan Shumpert.
Speaker: I do sound a little funky.
Speaker: This is the first time I've recorded it this way with a guest.
Speaker: The audio sounds weird just for a couple minutes.
Speaker: I swear I don't sound gurgly the whole time.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to Ryan and I talk about the volunteers.
Speaker: Here you go.
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Behind the Box Score podcast.
Speaker: I am now joined by Rocky Top Insider's own Ryan Shumpert.
Speaker: You may have read his work.
Speaker: You may have heard him on 104.5 The Zone or any other radio station.
Speaker: Really, I mean, it's starting to become around the nation.
Speaker: This guy's picking up so quickly.
Speaker: I went to college with him, took some classes with him, a friend of mine, and so excited to see that he is just killing it in this business and even more excited to have him on my own podcast,
Speaker: Ryan Shuffert, what's going on, man?
Speaker: Not much, Mac.
Speaker: I appreciate the kind words.
Speaker: This feels like a throwback.
Speaker: We had many conversations on camera or behind the mic during our college days, but haven't talked formally like this in a few years.
Speaker: So great to be on.
Speaker: I appreciate you having me.
Speaker: I know, dude.
Speaker: It's like bringing back the nostalgia feels.
Speaker: I mean, I feel like I'm on the hill right now.
Speaker: No, it's great.
Speaker: No, this is a blast.
Speaker: It's really good to have you on.
Speaker: It's kind of surreal.
Speaker: Like we were just talking...
Speaker: Before the podcast, you know, just about these kind of pinch yourself moments in the business.
Speaker: And you've gotten to have some of those.
Speaker: Before we get, I want to talk about college football playoff.
Speaker: I want to talk about the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl.
Speaker: That's just, you know, elating Tennessee Vols fans all around the nation.
Speaker: I want to talk about that.
Speaker: And then I want to get into basketball.
Speaker: But before that, I mean, quickly, man.
Speaker: you've gotten to go to a bunch of arenas, a bunch of stadiums.
Speaker: You've got to talk to a lot of players, a lot of coaches.
Speaker: Tell me some highlight moments.
Speaker: You've been with Rocky Top Insider for a little over two years now.
Speaker: Just give me some highlights, man.
Speaker: I want to hear.
Speaker: I would say the two big pinch-yourself highlight moments is one, just the Alabama game in 2022, the football game for Tennessee to get that first win.
Speaker: I'm a guy who grew up in Middle Tennessee.
Speaker: My dad grew up in Knoxville, was a big Tennessee fan.
Speaker: Tennessee hadn't beaten Alabama since I was like seven years old.
Speaker: And for as bad as the program was when Josh Heifel took over to beating Alabama 18 months later and everybody on the field and being able to work it, I mean, it's surreal.
Speaker: And there were a lot of moments that season too where it's just like the classic line I always go to is it's like, take us to get into a game or $200 and someone's paying me to be here and
Speaker: There, you know, it can easily be, and I'm sure you feel this too, like frustrations with the job and stuff like that.
Speaker: Parts of it is hard, but it's like those moments you've just got to like let that sink in and how what I'm doing truly is a dream.
Speaker: So that was a big one.
Speaker: And then the other one for me was the Sweet 16 game last year where Tennessee played in Madison Square Garden where it's just like,
Speaker: being a huge college basketball fan and just a huge sports fan in general.
Speaker: I mean, it's Domeka.
Speaker: It's unbelievable.
Speaker: So to be able to go cover Tennessee playing in a Sweet 16 game in Madison Square Garden was just a once-in-a-lifetime situation.
Speaker: And obviously that game didn't go as Tennessee would have liked.
Speaker: But still an awesome experience in a Kansas State-Michigan State game before it was a legendary game, I feel like, too, how exciting that was.
Speaker: So just being able to witness those.
Speaker: So there's been a lot of them, but those are probably the two I would point to the most.
Speaker: Dude, I love that.
Speaker: Yeah, Madison Square Garden.
Speaker: I mean, people dream about going to a game there their whole life.
Speaker: You got to cover one, and you just know how cool that is.
Speaker: So I couldn't happen to a better guy.
Speaker: So seriously, man, congrats.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Something that I don't love here, a quick radio segue.
Speaker: Let's start with the Citrus Bowl.
Speaker: Just getting quick back into some sports here.
Speaker: I'm upset at this season, but I also came in with some expectations that maybe weren't as high as some other Vols fans.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Ryan, first off, let's talk about the season before we get to the bowl itself.
Speaker: What are your thoughts on the season?
Speaker: What were your expectations going in?
Speaker: We haven't gotten to talk this whole football season, so I don't really even know.
Speaker: What was your opinion on the team headed in?
Speaker: Were you a Joe Milton truther?
Speaker: Were you kind of a little more apprehensive?
Speaker: What were your thoughts on, you know, year three of Hypel?
Speaker: Yeah, I was a little more need to see it to believe it with Milton.
Speaker: I mean, the Orange Bowl was great, and, you know, he played well.
Speaker: But you go back and watch that game.
Speaker: Tennessee was very reliant on big plays, and they were not –
Speaker: They had a lot of three and outs in that game.
Speaker: And even though Milton played well and played better than he did in 2021, there were still a lot of things that kind of led to pause.
Speaker: And when you talk about the fact that Tennessee was going to lose their top receivers and Darnell Wright.
Speaker: So, you know, I think I picked Tennessee to go 9-3.
Speaker: I was kind of 10-2 is probably a little more likely than 8-4, but not much.
Speaker: I felt like those two things were...
Speaker: were pretty similar chances of happening.
Speaker: So no, I mean, I think it's definitely a disappointing season.
Speaker: I don't think there's really anything getting around that.
Speaker: And I don't think all the offensive issues were on Joe Milton.
Speaker: I don't think the receivers played very well this season, but it's a quarterback-driven game, man.
Speaker: And I mean, football is a line of scrimmage and what you have at quarterback.
Speaker: And Tennessee,
Speaker: Milton at his best was a good game manager this season.
Speaker: And Tennessee didn't have the things around him to be a top-level team with Milton being a game manager.
Speaker: And obviously there were some games where he wasn't even a very effective game manager.
Speaker: So I think I look at it from the standpoint of the Milton experiment failed.
Speaker: That was a bad bet by Josh Heupel and his staff.
Speaker: To count on him and he was going to be an alone guy.
Speaker: But I think there's also a realism here, and it kind of goes both ways of being a negative and a positive.
Speaker: Tennessee was closer to 6-6 than they were 9-3.
Speaker: That's just kind of a real nice situation.
Speaker: They were not competitive.
Speaker: Outside of the first half of the Alabama game, they were not competitive in any of their losses, and they easily could have lost to Texas A&M and Kentucky games.
Speaker: So I think that's...
Speaker: disappointing in the sense of, yeah, the team really did take a bit, probably a bigger step back than you realize, but also kind of a positive of like the bottom could have fallen out for Tennessee this year.
Speaker: And it could have been where everybody nationally is looking at and saying, yeah, 22 was a great one-off for Tennessee and Hendon Hooker was great, but his program is not nowhere close to that.
Speaker: And while the fact that they went eight and four and they're in the Citrus Bowl, while disappointing, I think they're still just kind of a,
Speaker: the sense around the program is like they kind of took an expected step back i mean that's what happens when you lose type of players they did and they didn't replace them at a great rate so uh i think it's definitely a disappointing season but there is definitely for me an aspect of it could have gotten a lot worse than it did and given how often the bottom has fallen out for the tennessee football program in the last 15 years i think that is something you kind of have to take into account i i
Speaker: That's absolutely right.
Speaker: I think both things can be true, right?
Speaker: I mean, this was a disappointing season.
Speaker: It's been way worse before.
Speaker: And the reason it's not is because of some of these new things that have been institutionalized in this Tennessee program, in this system.
Speaker: And I think just as a culture, you know, this culture a few years ago may have collapsed.
Speaker: It may have been 6-6.
Speaker: It may have been 5-7.
Speaker: And
Speaker: You know, this was Hypel's worst season, I think, just in the three years.
Speaker: Not maybe from a record standpoint, but from just where we're at maybe as a program, expectation setting.
Speaker: But even there, he's able to keep these things afloat and keep them in some of these games.
Speaker: You say the competitive losses part.
Speaker: I think that's a great point as well.
Speaker: I mean, the Alabama game was...
Speaker: for the first half.
Speaker: That all felt like a facade.
Speaker: Even when, when Tennessee was winning, even when Tennessee did have that momentum, it never felt real.
Speaker: It never felt exactly legitimate.
Speaker: Part of my thoughts on this Tennessee team was the quarterback.
Speaker: Absolutely game manager at best Milton.
Speaker: And I think even that's probably generous, but,
Speaker: I think with Heupel's offensive system, the way he likes to spread out the defenses, it is so dead set on one-on-ones and getting man beaters outside at wide receiver.
Speaker: And obviously injuries were a part of the lack of weapons on the outside.
Speaker: But even before that, it didn't feel like, and obviously Jalen Hyatt, you know, Tillman's gone, but it didn't feel like they had those next man up outside at wide out.
Speaker: And I think that's so huge for Josh Heupel's system.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: That's a massive part of it that people will probably ignore all offseason when you're talking about Tennessee's offense.
Speaker: Tennessee had a lot of nice pieces of receiver.
Speaker: Tennessee didn't have a number one.
Speaker: Brew McCoy's a good player.
Speaker: He's not a number one.
Speaker: Squirrel White's a nice piece in the slot.
Speaker: Maybe potentially he can turn into a number one later in his career.
Speaker: He wasn't that as a sophomore.
Speaker: And you're right.
Speaker: Injuries were a part of that.
Speaker: But I just think the overall...
Speaker: Tennessee's receiver room as a whole, the injuries weren't the only reason or wasn't the main reason.
Speaker: They were lacking that.
Speaker: And, you know, maybe Dante Thornton was showing some signs of playing better towards the end of the year.
Speaker: And it's just unfortunate that his injury came when he was kind of finally figuring some things out.
Speaker: But he still wasn't that guy that Tennessee needed.
Speaker: So that was a huge part of it.
Speaker: And, you know, you don't always see it when you're watching games on TV, but when you're, you know, in the press box watching it, it, to me, it didn't feel like Joe Milton was, was missing a lot of guys running open down the field this year.
Speaker: And so he was missing some throws over the middle and he was not as decisive as he needed to be at times, but it wasn't like, Oh man, this guy just, he just, just not seeing stuff out there.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: A couple games like that, but not as a whole.
Speaker: So to me, that's a big part going into next year.
Speaker: Tennessee will have some of these receivers back.
Speaker: You expect those guys to get better.
Speaker: But I've kind of been pounding the table that Tennessee doesn't need to go out and get a bunch of guys in the portal receiver, but they need to go hard after some of the top names in the portal and truly get a number one.
Speaker: Because I think if not, you're going to see a lot of the same issues with the offense persist in the next season.
Speaker: Talk to me about Joe Milton this year from a team perspective, from what you saw from players looking at him as a leader.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what I've gone back and forth on.
Speaker: You know, I think he was very well liked.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I don't know that he was a fantastic leader.
Speaker: I mean, I think there were maybe some frustrations from people inside the program, you know, players included at –
Speaker: So I'm going to kind of lackadaisicalness of Milton.
Speaker: I'm trying to think of the right way to phrase it, but after losses, Milton's out there talking to the media, and it just doesn't feel like the losses are weighing on him.
Speaker: It felt like he liked a lot of the things about being the Tennessee quarterback, but some of the responsibilities come with that.
Speaker: Maybe he just didn't fully grasp.
Speaker: So I don't think he was a bad leader by any means, and
Speaker: It would have been interesting what happened if they had gone to Nico and how the team would have potentially rallied around him.
Speaker: I don't think that was ever as cut and dry as a scenario as a lot of fans wanted to make it sound like, especially because of the fact there was never really a point in the season where it was like –
Speaker: a good time to make the move really until they lost to georgia uh and at that point you know you're in the last game of the season so uh i think he was a solid leader i think he was a very well liked guy um but i don't think he necessarily brought all the intensity or the leadership and intangibles that a guy like kindon hooker did and i think that maybe led to some frustrations from some players um and coaches but never you know never at a point where like boiled over or anything and there was a lot of contention and conflict
Speaker: Okay, now talk to me a little bit about Nico.
Speaker: Also, teach me how to say his last name correctly.
Speaker: Oh, man, I've been in that boat too.
Speaker: Nico Iamaliava.
Speaker: Iamaliava.
Speaker: Iamaliava, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, Iamaliava.
Speaker: Iamaliava, gotcha.
Speaker: You know, the thing that I go back and forth on with Nico a little bit is
Speaker: Because he comes in, he's got all the NIL, he's the big recruit, California kid, wearing the pajama pants.
Speaker: I think Nico's a really good kid.
Speaker: And I think some people around him,
Speaker: Not that they're bad influences or anything like that.
Speaker: I don't mean to put it off like that.
Speaker: But just kind of have more of the college football business side of it, which is just a part of the deal in the NIL age.
Speaker: I think Nico's pretty grounded.
Speaker: I think he's confident without being overly cocky, at least at this point in his career.
Speaker: I don't think he came in with a lot of
Speaker: Like he was owed a lot.
Speaker: I don't think he came in with that at all, which I think was really important, especially for someone that was making the NIL that he was from day one.
Speaker: So I think he's grounded, and I think that's going to be important.
Speaker: I think what we – again, it kind of goes back to what I was just saying about –
Speaker: Him replacing Milton, you know, we get to watch him throw routes on air and some one-on-one red zone stuff in practice.
Speaker: So I've never been a guy that's going to sit here and just tell you, like, I know what they have in Nico.
Speaker: I think Nico has better pocket presence than Joe Milton.
Speaker: I think his ability to do stuff off script is going to be an immediate upgrade next year for Tennessee.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's hard to know.
Speaker: exactly how all that stuff's going to mesh.
Speaker: I would like to see him play in the Citrus Bowl to just get some experience under his belt and not go into next year, you know, just completely, you know, kind of new to all of it.
Speaker: So I think he's a really talented guy.
Speaker: I think what he's able to do with his legs and how he's able to protect himself as a runner is going to be important because even though he has put on some weight, some strength, he's still super, super skinny.
Speaker: And I think it's going to be important for Tennessee to get some of those veteran offensive linemen back because, you know,
Speaker: The offensive line depth, as we kind of saw in those last two games of the year against Georgia and Vanderbilt when guys went down, is pretty shaky.
Speaker: So I think that's going to be a big part of it.
Speaker: I think Nico's ceiling is high.
Speaker: That's why Tennessee put the investment into him that they did.
Speaker: But it's hard not to circle him and kind of be like, Josh Ibella is really going to be defined, in my opinion, by what Nico Iamaliava does.
Speaker: Because these next two to three years of him as Tennessee's starting quarterback are –
Speaker: the points in Hypo's tenure where people are going to expect to be making this expanded 12-team playoff or at least be in contention for that every year.
Speaker: Yeah, this is it.
Speaker: Whether it's fair or not, that's going to be the expectation.
Speaker: Up in that 12-team playoff or at least contending for that 12-spot year in and year out.
Speaker: And Nico is that five-star guy.
Speaker: The Vols fans have been wanting, and he can bring that sort of poise and talent.
Speaker: And
Speaker: You know, you mentioned the scrambling.
Speaker: I think from an athletic perspective, that's what I thought Milton was going to have a little bit more of.
Speaker: The scrambling, the creating, the outside-the-pocket scramble back foot stuff.
Speaker: And, you know, it's never just one person in football, right?
Speaker: We talked about the weapons or lack thereof.
Speaker: And we talked about Josh Heupel having some problems adjusting to the pieces around him.
Speaker: But either way, Milton didn't necessarily have that improvisation capability, that backyard football in him.
Speaker: No, he didn't.
Speaker: And that was, you know, something that I worried about him just as a whole is it just never felt like his pocket presence was great.
Speaker: It didn't feel like off script.
Speaker: He was great.
Speaker: And I think maybe what was frustrating about that is there were flashes of him making some really nice plays in the middle of the season.
Speaker: Like you had in the Alabama game, in the Kentucky game.
Speaker: I mean, I go back to that throw he made in the Kentucky game against Dante Thornton in the third quarter when
Speaker: Tennessee's offense was really stagnant at that point in the game.
Speaker: Rolling left, right on the money, 60-yard gain, that drive when Tennessee needed it.
Speaker: But he just never was able to sustain that.
Speaker: I think it goes along with just the way that they –
Speaker: To me, it felt like they waited way too long to make his legs an emphasis in the run game.
Speaker: I mean, they needed every aspect of what they could do to help him out offensively.
Speaker: And they didn't go to that, really, until, what, that Alabama game, maybe?
Speaker: I mean, in the middle of October, when the offense was struggling.
Speaker: And I think that gave them a little extra juice when they did, but it was just never –
Speaker: never quite enough and Milton Wally has that straight line speed he just he doesn't have the elusiveness that Hooker had and the Hinton Hooker's ability to
Speaker: Do what he did against Florida, where he turns his sack into a 40-yard gain, was special.
Speaker: But at the same time, Huggers' ability to turn what was a five-yard sack into a one-yard run or a one-yard loss was invaluable.
Speaker: And especially this year, as we saw predominantly with the holding calls, but also with the sacks, when Tennessee got behind script, this offense just really didn't have enough to overcome it.
Speaker: And I just feel like that derailed them in multiple games this season.
Speaker: Too bad, too, because I felt like the defense actually had some really good moments throughout the whole season and stayed fairly consistent and maybe even improved from last year.
Speaker: It's one of those things where it just didn't hit at the right time, right?
Speaker: You know, this year's defense with last year's offense, you know, what kind of team would that be?
Speaker: But that's just not the way football works.
Speaker: Talk to me a little bit about this recruiting class.
Speaker: Then I want to really kind of get into this Iowa game.
Speaker: I think the recruiting class, the thing that stands out is what they've been able to do on the offensive line.
Speaker: Not getting Jordan Seaton was a big loss.
Speaker: Obviously, he's number one off stack on the country for a reason.
Speaker: But I still think this is by far the best offensive line class Tennessee has signed since Josh Heupel and Glenn Ellerbe have been here.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: I really like the Bennett Warren kid from the Houston area that they went in and got out over Texas A&M and Oklahoma.
Speaker: They have depth pieces there.
Speaker: Gage Ginther is a guy that I think is way better than his ranking indicates.
Speaker: So I think that's going to be important.
Speaker: It's not necessarily just something that's going to show up this year, but when you talk about Tennessee, it feels like
Speaker: In the immediate future, they were going to be dependent on getting guys back for their super senior year or the portal.
Speaker: I think this is going to help stimmy that off after a couple seasons, which is just important because it's really hard to find good offensive linemen, especially good offensive tackles in the portal.
Speaker: And then just on the defensive side of the ball, I think they continue to recruit the defensive line.
Speaker: Well, they've added a couple more guys at the edge spots that I like and are going to be really good players.
Speaker: Obviously, Jordan Ross is one of those guys.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: It's hard not to talk about the highest rated guy in the class, Mike Matthews, five-star receiver from, to go into Atlanta and beat out Clemson and Georgia for a kid they both really wanted is super impressive.
Speaker: And Josh Heibel in his past, even going back to UCF, has not had a ton of freshmen play big reps at receiver, even though that is kind of typically a spot you can see freshmen step in right away.
Speaker: I'll be curious to see what Matthews can do for Tennessee next season, because I do think he has that high end talent that we were talking about that Tennessee was kind of missing this past season.
Speaker: Exciting stuff, man.
Speaker: I mean, for me, I am not one of the, hey, Heiple has to do better this next season or else I want him off.
Speaker: I always have it a little bit longer of a leash with a lot of these situations.
Speaker: And for what Heiple has done so quickly here at Tennessee, what fans have gleaned for for decades, he's done in a couple of seasons.
Speaker: I don't think we can forget last year just because maybe this season didn't live up even close to what maybe some of the hype people were conjuring about.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Let's get to this Iowa game.
Speaker: This is an interesting game.
Speaker: This is going to be so weird.
Speaker: This is going to set football back decades.
Speaker: This game really is going to be quite strange.
Speaker: I'm just not really ready for it.
Speaker: But Iowa's a team that, you look, they don't have a good win.
Speaker: They really don't have a, like, standard, like, hey, this was our win this year.
Speaker: Look at us.
Speaker: That's why we're number 20th in the nation.
Speaker: That's why we went to the Big Ten championship game because we beat these couple of teams.
Speaker: They went up against Penn State at Penn State.
Speaker: It was a hyped-up game early on in the year, number 10 in the country.
Speaker: At least Penn State ended.
Speaker: They were higher at that point, and Iowa was too.
Speaker: 31-0 was the final score in that game.
Speaker: They take on Michigan, 26-0, and Michigan, I mean,
Speaker: didn't look good in that game and it was 26 to nothing this is a team in iowa who rarely passes the ball of kind of like a advanced army or something like that i don't really it's a very strange strange team facing what we've already kind of talked about is somewhat depleted tennessee volunteers team i've seen now on twitter and you can kind of inform me and the listeners here uh what is it four or five defensive backs now who aren't going to be playing in this game for the vols
Speaker: Yeah, six defensive backs, actually.
Speaker: I've entered a transfer portal since Tennessee, since he ended a regular season.
Speaker: No, I kind of joked about that today.
Speaker: It's a good thing that they're playing Iowa in this game.
Speaker: Can you imagine Drake May probably offside of the bowl game?
Speaker: But North Carolina was a very popular bowl opponent.
Speaker: Can you imagine this defensive back having to face someone like Drake May?
Speaker: Dicing it up.
Speaker: That's a good thing.
Speaker: I mean, I was having flashbacks to what Aiden McConnell did to Tennessee and New York City Bowl.
Speaker: Against a similarly depleted defensive backfield with a number of guys that were hurt or had opted out of that bowl game, like I think Elante Taylor might have.
Speaker: So, you know, for the most part, I think Tamari McDonald, who entered the portal today, is a loss.
Speaker: And Danico Slaughter, who entered...
Speaker: late last week i think friday is you know that's tough too but besides that the other five or other four guys they were all very french rotation players brandon turnage played a little bit this season uh but the other guys really hadn't so i think when you talk about the long term i don't think it's a massive loss and it's kind of almost the same way that you would talk about joe milton potentially opting out of the bowl game where
Speaker: You just kind of want to get – I mean, to me, these bowl games feel like glorified spring practice – or, excuse me, NFL preseason games now, where it's almost like I'd rather just see what these guys who are going to have to step into a bigger role next year look like.
Speaker: And that's what's going to happen in Tennessee's defensive backfield.
Speaker: Ricky Gibson, who I thought flashed when he got some opportunities later this year, true freshman from Alabama.
Speaker: We're going to see a lot of him.
Speaker: I think we'll see a lot of Jordan Matthews.
Speaker: So I think all that's going to be important.
Speaker: Again, it comes against a passing offense that isn't very good.
Speaker: I think the thing that's to me intriguing about the Iowa matchup is it's easy to go back and look at what Tennessee did to them in the 2015 Gator Bowl, where their speed just killed them on the offense.
Speaker: And I think most Josh Eiffel teams would just be built to annihilate Iowa.
Speaker: But what Tennessee's lacked in the passing game this year and how they've been so dependent on their run game, and it's a between-the-tackles running game that Tennessee has, kind of plays into Iowa's strength of what they can do well defensively.
Speaker: So, again, it goes the other way, too.
Speaker: Tennessee's run defense has been pretty stout the last two years.
Speaker: There's a reason the over-under in this game is 30-and-a-half.
Speaker: I think what you said about setting back football is pretty accurate.
Speaker: And it's going to be really funny because this is a lead-in to the college football playoff games.
Speaker: It's Tennessee-Iowa.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Everybody getting on their couch New Year's Day a little early, getting excited for the playoff game.
Speaker: They're going to get not quite a treat as the 1 p.m.
Speaker: Eastern time Citrus Bowl.
Speaker: What is this weird thing they're calling football?
Speaker: This isn't football.
Speaker: That's exactly what it's going to be.
Speaker: It's exactly right.
Speaker: Well, I honestly –
Speaker: you're kind of talking me into the under here, which I didn't think was going to happen, but I, I, I kind of feel that like that right now.
Speaker: Cause I was defenses for real.
Speaker: That that's a legitimate defense that does know how to fly around great tacklers and multiple hats to the football.
Speaker: So, and like you say, I mean, that just kind of matches up perfectly with what Tennessee hasn't been able to do.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: haven't been able to necessarily pass the ball as consistently as we'd like.
Speaker: So be watching that game.
Speaker: And yeah, nice warmup for, for the CFP.
Speaker: What do you think about college football playoffs?
Speaker: By the way, what, what do you think of the seating?
Speaker: Personally, I was actually pretty happy with how this turned out.
Speaker: I don't think it's the four best teams, but that's not necessarily the way that this works.
Speaker: And that's why 12 teams will be great.
Speaker: Cause we'll always have the four best teams in at least more often than not.
Speaker: You'd think, I mean, it would be very odd for one to not get in, in a 12 team playoff, but yeah,
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, Georgia, I think, was one of those four best teams, but I think the right four got in.
Speaker: And I'm one of those, you know, against FSU guys here.
Speaker: And I think I may have been in the minority.
Speaker: Where are you at?
Speaker: Do you think Florida State should be in?
Speaker: See, I've always been a – it's about – I've always been a most deserving guy because it's exactly what you said.
Speaker: When you talk about the best teams –
Speaker: I just don't think that's true.
Speaker: Georgia would be in if we're talking about the best teams.
Speaker: You could argue Georgia is still the best team in college football right now.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: If Georgia had gotten in, that would probably be my pick to win it.
Speaker: Now, it would obviously be... It's not like I would take them against the field, but that would probably be my pick.
Speaker: So, you know, I hate it for Florida State.
Speaker: I think they played a challenging out-of-conference schedule.
Speaker: They did everything they could.
Speaker: What to me would have been really interesting is if Georgia would have won.
Speaker: I think if Georgia would have won, they might have put Florida State in over Texas.
Speaker: But there was just never a world where the SEC champion wasn't going to get in.
Speaker: And once Alabama won that game, they were just kind of – Texas and Alabama were tied together because of that Texas win in Tuscaloosa.
Speaker: So, you know, I hate it for Florida State.
Speaker: Being a most deserving guy, I think they should have gotten in over Alabama, but that was never going to happen.
Speaker: And I do think we got two incredibly intriguing matchups, and I think genuinely for the first time, this is the 10th year of the college football playoff, I think we have a playoff where all four teams could potentially win it.
Speaker: And no one winning their first semifinal game would be any sort of upset.
Speaker: Well, and I think that's the key there, right?
Speaker: Because you're going to watch Florida State, Georgia, and everyone who was crying over Florida State not being in the playoffs is going to go, okay, well, I can't really argue that now.
Speaker: Because I think that Georgia-Florida State game is going to get ugly.
Speaker: I truly do.
Speaker: I don't know who's going to be in.
Speaker: I don't know who's going to be sitting out.
Speaker: That's always kind of a storyline now in these bowl games, if it's not necessarily a CFP game.
Speaker: So I'll be watching for that.
Speaker: But, yeah, I kind of agree with you.
Speaker: I think –
Speaker: I think it's one of those things where, yeah, it does suck.
Speaker: I mean, Florida State did absolutely everything.
Speaker: They did everything, but, you know, the Jordan Travis injury and the fact that their bowl game wasn't overly impressive, it's tough.
Speaker: Or, excuse me, their conference champion game.
Speaker: Yeah, their conference championship.
Speaker: Yeah, it wasn't overly impressive.
Speaker: I mean, it's tough.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: And to your point about the orange bowl game, not being competitive, like it does feel to me, it feels like there's been a definitive shift for Georgia and how these treat these games since they lost that game in Texas in the sugar bowl.
Speaker: However many years ago, I wasn't in the 2020 sugar bowl, 2019 year where they got beat.
Speaker: And I guess it's only been one time since that they've been in that game, but they came out,
Speaker: very locked and loaded and from talking to some people to cover the Georgia football program, I think Kirby Smart has made that a point that this is going to happen to our program again.
Speaker: So I'm with you.
Speaker: I think that game will probably
Speaker: There's a reason it's a two-touchdown spread.
Speaker: And again, like we said, Georgia still is probably one of the best teams in the country.
Speaker: I think Carson Beck will play in that game.
Speaker: He should.
Speaker: I think you're probably right.
Speaker: Yeah, he definitely should.
Speaker: And he should come back for another year, in my opinion.
Speaker: He could maybe be a late first-round guy, but next year's quarterback class isn't good.
Speaker: I was extremely impressed with how he played down the stretch of the season.
Speaker: I thought Georgia should have been a lot more aggressive in the SEC Championship.
Speaker: Completely agree.
Speaker: with the way they called plays.
Speaker: So I think he comes back, and I think they win that one-handedly.
Speaker: And, again, it sucks for Florida State, but they got four teams in there who were all capable of winning.
Speaker: And, again, there was just never going to be a world where Alabama did not make the playoffs.
Speaker: Yeah, I think Carson Beck has a chance to be one of the better quarterbacks in college football next season if he stays.
Speaker: I mean, if you take the first weeks of Carson Beck and compare it to, you know, the last month and a half that we just saw, I mean, it's night and day.
Speaker: Carson Beck's progress has been awesome to watch and also scary if you're a Tennessee or any other SEC fan or any other contender because next year they are coming and Kirby Smart's going to have loads of bulletin board material.
Speaker: Okay, winner, real quick, you got someone winning at all?
Speaker: I got Texas over Alabama.
Speaker: I think we get the rematch.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: And I just think Texas has been sneaky good all season.
Speaker: I mean, they lost the Oklahoma game, which was disappointing.
Speaker: But I feel like the –
Speaker: coinciding with them losing that game and what Quinn Ewers got hurt like the next week or very shortly after and they weren't as convincing with the backup but like yeah you don't expect them to and I just think they've been really really solid the entire season and I think this is what everyone every common fan wasn't recognizing going into that Alabama Texas game is that this Texas team has NFL players across the board this is a Texas team that is loaded with dudes on the defense and it's not just
Speaker: a Texas team that is kind of like what Tennessee was in 22, where they got a great offensive coach and a good quarterback and some good offensive playmakers.
Speaker: I think this team is much more well-rounded.
Speaker: So I think they beat Washington in a good game, and I think they beat Alabama for the title.
Speaker: A little payback for whatever it was, 2009, I guess, in the Rose Bowl when Colt McCoy went down.
Speaker: Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker: Remember that?
Speaker: Remember that?
Speaker: Very, very well my dad went to Texas, so we tend to watch a lot of those big games.
Speaker: I'll be rooting for him, even though I'm always horns down, but I'll be rooting for Texas.
Speaker: I've got Bama over Texas for what it's worth, but obviously I'll be rooting for the latter.
Speaker: Okay, let's go to hoops here real quick.
Speaker: I'll be candid like I was with you before we started the pod.
Speaker: I've watched very little of this Tennessee basketball team so far, and that's usually the way I do with college basketball.
Speaker: It's really NFL, some NBA sprinkled in, college football, and then around mid-January, I go, okay, let's get back.
Speaker: I want to hear the CBS Sports theme music.
Speaker: I want it all.
Speaker: I'm ready.
Speaker: I'm ready to get ready for March here a couple months in mid-January.
Speaker: As the in-conference schedule begins, I get really excited.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: I have been, you know, paying attention to the highlights, your tweets.
Speaker: You know, you can follow Ryan Shumpert on Twitter.
Speaker: That's, what is it?
Speaker: R Shump 00.
Speaker: So make sure you go follow him.
Speaker: I'll have that link in the bio.
Speaker: So, and his coverage is great on everything Vols Hoops.
Speaker: It looks like Tennessee going into the season, the hype that I was hearing with Dalton Connect, with this whole roster.
Speaker: I was floored, man.
Speaker: I was pumped.
Speaker: And now I, you know, again, I'm reading box scores.
Speaker: I'm looking at highlights.
Speaker: I'm seeing tweets.
Speaker: I'm not watching these games like you are, but I look at just these schedules and I see, okay, it seems like every good team they've played, it hasn't necessarily gone the way they've wanted.
Speaker: I mean, Illinois was a really good win, but I think it was the Maui Invitational.
Speaker: Is that correct, Ryan?
Speaker: You know, yeah, so you go those losses back to back from Kansas, North Carolina, Purdue before that, and those are all top 10 squads.
Speaker: Tell me about this team.
Speaker: Tell me about what's transpired so far early on.
Speaker: Talk to me about the close losses, some of the good wins, the lows, the highs, and what to expect here.
Speaker: Well, I think the thing that stands out the most, you talked about it.
Speaker: It was more offensively driven.
Speaker: They have more offensive firepower.
Speaker: That was all the talking in the offseason.
Speaker: And
Speaker: There was a healthy skepticism to it or just a healthy see it to believe it because that's always been a talking point just because that's always where Tennessee's kind of needed to improve the last couple seasons.
Speaker: But I think a lot of it is for real.
Speaker: Don't connect as a guy Tennessee has not had since Grant Williams and just his ability to score.
Speaker: And really his game is a lot more versatile because he's a true guard at 6'6".
Speaker: He can score in a lot of different ways.
Speaker: He's a guy Tennessee's absolutely missed in massive fashion the last two seasons.
Speaker: And I think what he's done
Speaker: is he's kind of freed everybody else up just to be themselves.
Speaker: Josiah Jordan-James, Sakai Ziegler, Santiago Vescavi to a degree, probably less than those two guys.
Speaker: Last year especially, they had to do more than what they really could do, or at least consistently could do.
Speaker: They weren't able to just be themselves.
Speaker: They had to press and give Tennessee more.
Speaker: That hasn't been the case.
Speaker: With Dalton Connect, they can kind of
Speaker: play a more relaxed style, and they can do the other things on the court to make them good players, and offense doesn't become quite as much as a priority.
Speaker: And we've seen that.
Speaker: And Tennessee in the past has talked about playing faster.
Speaker: And I've always been so skeptical of that because –
Speaker: You don't play defense the way Tennessee does and really play, to me, all that faster.
Speaker: Well, they've done exactly what they said they're going to do.
Speaker: They're shooting it quick on the offensive end.
Speaker: Their average possession length ranks 25th nationally, the fastest in Ken Palm, and their defense is in.300 still.
Speaker: And they feel like they have the depth to kind of do that.
Speaker: So a lot that I've seen that I've liked, and I'll especially go back.
Speaker: The analogy I kept using was,
Speaker: The first step is you've got to notice you've got an issue.
Speaker: And then you've got to go get the players to address the issue, which they did.
Speaker: You liked it, bringing an offensive-minded players.
Speaker: And then you've got to say in practice, this is how we're going to play different.
Speaker: You've got to practice it.
Speaker: And then you've got to do it in the games.
Speaker: And then the final step is, and I was so skeptical whether Rick Barnes would do this,
Speaker: You get into a game like the Kansas game, win in Maui, their final game in Maui, shots weren't falling.
Speaker: They couldn't score.
Speaker: It looked a lot like last year.
Speaker: Dalton Kinnak playing third game in as many days was struggling offensively.
Speaker: Will he just revert back to how they played in the past and wanting to win the defense?
Speaker: And he didn't do it.
Speaker: He played Dalton Kinnack, he played Jordan Ganey, who is another offensively-minded transfer from USC Upstate down the stretch of that game.
Speaker: And to me, that was super encouraging.
Speaker: So that's kind of the overall view of what I like about this team.
Speaker: To this point, we talk about the schedule, they've played just a gauntlet.
Speaker: I think it's now five at our first nine games against teams in Ken Palm that are ranked in the top 15.
Speaker: They played Michigan State in an exhibition game too, charity exhibition that they won.
Speaker: They have a win at Wisconsin that was really nice.
Speaker: They've beaten some kind of mediocre Syracuse and George Mason's teams, and you mentioned the Illinois one.
Speaker: And then the three losses they had in the middle there, two in Maui being the Purdue game and Kansas game, and then the last one being at North Carolina.
Speaker: So obviously you don't want to lose those games.
Speaker: There were issues you look at from those games and kind of say, all right, this matters.
Speaker: But at the same time, I haven't left overly discouraged by them.
Speaker: It's a team that – It's November.
Speaker: It's won.
Speaker: That was November.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: is november you have
Speaker: Zakiya Ziegler is coming off a torn ACL, and he's kind of finally starting to look like the guy that we saw before the injury.
Speaker: Tobey Iwaka, if you talk about the one part of this team that you kind of worry about is they don't have a ton of interior depth.
Speaker: And Tobey Iwaka missed or was playing injured in two of those games and then missed the North Carolina one, so they were thin there.
Speaker: And then Santiago Bescovy, I think there's just kind of continually, there's a blending of what's everybody's role, and we've got to figure all this out, and everybody meshing together with Dalton Connect being the lead guy offensively.
Speaker: I think they're continuing to figure that out more and more.
Speaker: And I still think even to this point, even though it's not like I feel like the coaching or any by any means has been bad, I feel like the sum of the parts is better than what we've seen.
Speaker: And as they get more and more healthy and they play more and more together, I think you're going to see a team that's going to get a lot better.
Speaker: And it's going to be, to me, the best Tennessee team since that Grant Williams-Admiral Schofield team when we were still in school.
Speaker: Yeah, and you mentioned at the end, obviously, that was the best team.
Speaker: They had that big three, that fantastic four with Bone and then Bowden.
Speaker: I mean, that was an awesome, awesome team.
Speaker: Lamontae Turner coming off the bench.
Speaker: But you mentioned some of the things that maybe Tennessee's doing a little bit differently here as far as pace of play.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: One of the problems that that Tennessee team had was that they weren't able to pick up the pace sometimes.
Speaker: And sometimes it felt like Jordan Bone was moving a million miles an hour, but really it was maybe that everyone else was going a little bit too slow.
Speaker: That's actually what the reality was, right?
Speaker: And so who's going to be the one?
Speaker: Is it Zekai Ziegler who's going to be really running that pace of play here?
Speaker: Because Vescovy isn't necessarily that guy.
Speaker: Vescovy, he doesn't play like that.
Speaker: And frankly, the more I watch Vescovy over these last couple of years, the less I see a point guard.
Speaker: No, he's not.
Speaker: And that's where, again, he's especially when I thought he did a lot better than I really expected last year when Ziegler went down and being able to run the point.
Speaker: And it wasn't exclusively him.
Speaker: They put Jemai Meshack, who's another guy who's not a true point guard.
Speaker: So to me, it's Ziegler who is the true point guard, the guy that's going to be the orchestrator of the offense, the guy that can push the pace.
Speaker: But I think almost more important is Kinect because Kinect is so good in transition.
Speaker: He's
Speaker: You see a white guy from northern Colorado who's putting up big numbers.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, he's shooting 40% from three.
Speaker: I'm sure that'll translate.
Speaker: How much is the scoring at the basket that he did in the Big South going to translate to the SEC?
Speaker: Again, maybe I was being a little racist against a white guy thinking he wouldn't be able to or being skeptical of it, but it 100% has.
Speaker: And it was quickly in that first exhibition game, I'm sure you saw it, the dunk he threw down on Michigan State where it was like,
Speaker: Oh my, this is a dude.
Speaker: Yeah, this is a guy.
Speaker: And his ability, he's got 6'6", long arms.
Speaker: He can finish with both hands really well around the basket.
Speaker: He gives Tennessee something in transition that they haven't had.
Speaker: Because Josiah Jordan James, you know he's been better there, and he kind of has that same build.
Speaker: finishing in the basket has been one of his biggest weaknesses in his Tennessee career.
Speaker: So they didn't really have a guy who could, to me, get downhill and really put a lot of pressure on opponents in transition, besides Ziegler, but Ziegler is doing it trying to get other guys involved.
Speaker: They didn't really have the speed and the guys could run with them and finish with them.
Speaker: I think Kinect's a big part of that.
Speaker: Jemai Meshack will continue to come along.
Speaker: And Jin Jonas-Adu, who to me has been one of the biggest developments this year.
Speaker: He's a super athletic big man and runs the floor really well.
Speaker: And they've been able to get him some easy buckets in transition too.
Speaker: So it just seems like the formula for a Tennessee basketball team is to have a 6'6 beast as their best player, you know, Grant Williams and now Dalton Connect.
Speaker: All right, great.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: From what I have seen from Connect, again, I haven't watched enough, but it looks like he's got a little bit of everything in his back.
Speaker: I mean, you mentioned the inside, back to the basket.
Speaker: He's got a finger.
Speaker: He's got a floater.
Speaker: He's got a nice jump shot.
Speaker: He can shoot the three-pointer.
Speaker: He can shoot it off the dribble a little bit.
Speaker: I mean, it looks like he's got some serious skills.
Speaker: And if everyone else can kind of work around that, I mean, this team's got a player that's going to be tough to guard against any defense, against any formula.
Speaker: How was he against Purdue?
Speaker: Because I know they've got 7'4".
Speaker: Edie.
Speaker: Edie, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Zach Edie.
Speaker: And I know he's, you know, just a free throw machine and a foul merchant.
Speaker: How was that?
Speaker: No, that's 100% what happened.
Speaker: That game was a free throw contest for a large part of it.
Speaker: Those were really the two games, the Purdue game and the Kansas game, where to me, Kinect struggled.
Speaker: It wasn't like he was awful in them.
Speaker: He still scored 15 plus points, but he just wasn't as efficient scoring.
Speaker: He didn't score at the basket at the rate you'd expect.
Speaker: Again, he's 7-4 and
Speaker: He's really good defensively, and I think there was an element of, all right, they're playing their third game.
Speaker: He's played 90 minutes now over a three-game span that they kind of ran into in the Kansas game.
Speaker: And I thought his response to that was fantastic.
Speaker: Because you do wonder at that time, sure, Tennessee had played some good teams and he played well in those games, but it's still early in the season.
Speaker: And when the sample size is small, every performance is kind of like, all right, this is an anomaly.
Speaker: Is this what we're going to expect?
Speaker: And the way Kinect came out in the North Carolina game, which, I mean, it was just unbelievable.
Speaker: The first game after that, Tennessee played horrifically in the first half of that game, fell behind by 20 points.
Speaker: And Kinect really single-handedly
Speaker: pulled them back in that game in the second half.
Speaker: He scored 37 points.
Speaker: He got fouled in the last two minutes of the game at the basket, and he rolled his ankle, and he wasn't able to come back in.
Speaker: If he had shot those free throws and made one of them, he would have been the all-time away scoring record holder in the D&E Smith Center.
Speaker: I mean, 40 years in North Carolina basketball.
Speaker: I'm talking about ACC.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He tied the record.
Speaker: He tied the record at 37 points.
Speaker: And he did it.
Speaker: I don't have this outline in front of me.
Speaker: He did it on like 17 shots.
Speaker: He's like 13 to 17 from the field.
Speaker: He didn't miss a shot from two-point range.
Speaker: I think he was four of eight from 30.
Speaker: I think that's where all four of his misses came from.
Speaker: He just has a different element to his game.
Speaker: And again, I think there's an adjustment.
Speaker: We saw a little bit in Maui of playing the best athletes in the country and being the guy that people circle on the scouting report.
Speaker: And I just think we've seen him work through that.
Speaker: He was big sparking Tennessee against Illinois the other night.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I love Grant Williams.
Speaker: He's one of my all-time favorite Vols.
Speaker: He was an awesome player.
Speaker: But those March games, it's so much about guards and guys on the perimeter who can get you an ISO bucket in the last two minutes.
Speaker: And Grant Williams could obviously do that, but it's just different.
Speaker: It's harder to do that and play through a postman in those situations.
Speaker: I think Dalton Connect is that.
Speaker: He's that guy Tennessee's been missing.
Speaker: And really the Wisconsin game is the one where I circle it.
Speaker: Tennessee was up by five in the last couple minutes.
Speaker: They went ISO him two or three possessions at the end of the game in the shot clock.
Speaker: He got to the basket and finished.
Speaker: He had some contested mid-range jumpers.
Speaker: He did a lot of those closing time things that really Tennessee's, you know, K.A.
Speaker: Chandler did some of it two years ago, especially by the end of the year.
Speaker: But Tennessee's kind of missed since Grant Williams.
Speaker: And I don't think they've really ever had a guy like Kinnak who can score at the rate he has from the perimeter.
Speaker: Yeah, which is something that Grant just didn't have in college.
Speaker: He didn't have the perimeter.
Speaker: He certainly couldn't shoot off the dribble like Kinect.
Speaker: And just, yeah, the savviness that Kinect has with the ball in his hands.
Speaker: I mean, it just seems like he really has control of what's happening on the floor.
Speaker: I'm excited to see this team.
Speaker: SEC play starts here mid-January.
Speaker: They'll host Ole Miss.
Speaker: Talk to me a little bit about the SEC here real quick before we get out of here.
Speaker: I mean, where are they going to be as far as the ranks are concerned?
Speaker: They were picked to win the SEC in the preseason.
Speaker: And to me, it's kind of been a disappointing start to the year for the SEC.
Speaker: Arkansas has been the big one.
Speaker: They struggled early in the season.
Speaker: But that's kind of par for the course with Eric Musselman at Arkansas.
Speaker: Even last year when they struggled really the whole season –
Speaker: There they were, upsetting Kansas, the one-seed Kansas, in the round of 32 to make the Sweet 16.
Speaker: Kentucky, to me, is a team I'm super high on.
Speaker: They've been a lot of fun to watch.
Speaker: And Cal has kind of gone back to his original mold at Kentucky of playing a ton of five-stars.
Speaker: And they've got a lot of talented kids.
Speaker: Reed Shepard, who's like, he's got to be like a bluegrass folk hero.
Speaker: Dad played on the Rick Pitino National Championship team's white point guard.
Speaker: Does all the little things well, not athletic, just a savvy player.
Speaker: Like, they're a lot of fun.
Speaker: I think Tennessee and Kentucky are two best teams in the SEC.
Speaker: Alabama is – seemed to me that's fascinating because –
Speaker: They can score with anybody in the country.
Speaker: I mean, they're awesome offensively.
Speaker: They're super fun to watch.
Speaker: I'm not sure they could guard the two of us and get Jacob Bauter out there with us.
Speaker: I think we could go take those guys.
Speaker: I really do.
Speaker: They can't stop anybody.
Speaker: And they've really missed Charles Mediaco, who was a guy I think everybody at Alabama expected to come back and win to the draft.
Speaker: They replaced him with North Dakota State transfer Grant Nelson, who is kind of the same way.
Speaker: He's a super fun guy to watch.
Speaker: Great offensive player.
Speaker: Can score inside and out.
Speaker: But he's real thin, not a fantastic athlete, and has kind of gotten pushed around inside.
Speaker: So you wonder if they can figure – I think they have some genuine roster flaws defensively to where they're never going to be a great team.
Speaker: But if they can just figure some of that out, they're going to be in the hunt.
Speaker: And then A&M, who I did say has struggled some.
Speaker: They've played a hard schedule, and they have a veteran team who –
Speaker: Buzz Williams is one of those guys.
Speaker: He's kind of like Frank Martin was at South Carolina.
Speaker: No matter what they do and what their roster is, he knows the SEC well, so well.
Speaker: He's such a good coach that I think they're going to be in sick of it in mid-February as well.
Speaker: exciting man i i you know basketball again it doesn't start to me for me really heavily until the new year especially college nba does i mean for me just because from the celtics perspective but i mean dude i'm pumped i mean this this is gonna be great i'm gonna have to go catch a game i want to see you doing your thing i i'm just been so excited again if if you want to know what's going on with the vols with sec basketball with football you
Speaker: If you want to know the debacle of the citrus cheese at citrus bowl, that that's going to be, you need to go follow Ryan Shumpert on Twitter.
Speaker: So find him, rshump00.
Speaker: Again, I'll have that linked in the bio.
Speaker: Dude, it's been really good seeing you, man.
Speaker: I'm going to have you on again when I know at least one thing about this Tennessee basketball roster.
Speaker: We'll actually have to get to have a real discussion once I'm fully fledged in this.
Speaker: Yeah, it sounds great.
Speaker: I want you to watch some of it because I want you... Yes.
Speaker: I want to talk to you about Dalton Connect's NBA.
Speaker: I think he's a fascinating NBA draft case.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: Because he has so much talent, but he's also like 24 years old, and you don't see a lot of 24-year-olds go into first round.
Speaker: So he's been an early second-round mock.
Speaker: I'm going to be fascinated to see what that kind of ebbs and flows over the course of the season, and I'll be really curious to get your thoughts on it as well.
Speaker: That was actually something that was just kind of crawling into my mind, him being, you know, a couple weeks ago, thinking about him, seeing some of these clips, not really getting to watch him, but seeing the raw, just the skill that he has, not raw.
Speaker: I mean, he's actually really well-formed being 23, 24 years old, but you're right.
Speaker: That's kind of the point is, okay, is he going to go in that first round?
Speaker: Yeah, once I watched some more, I'm really excited to get to kind of talk.
Speaker: about you as far as you know, that's more of my lane and you will have watched him in person so many times.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm excited to get to talk about that and really about what, you know, connects future is and what the rest of this team's future is as well.
Speaker: Not only going to the pros, going to the NBA, but as far as March is concerned, man, because that's really where it matters.
Speaker: I mean, this is, this is what Tennessee fans are waiting for.
Speaker: Let's go Rick and get, get to the elite eight.
Speaker: I mean, that's again, Vols fans never set the bar low.
Speaker: But that's where it's at right now for this basketball program.
Speaker: It just simply is.
Speaker: And the offseason hype for guys like me who are just on Twitter looking at highlights, it doesn't help because now I'm just fully in it as well.
Speaker: I'm like, yep, that's the precedent.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: So it's exciting.
Speaker: Thanks for what you do, man.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker: And we'll have you on again soon, all right?
Speaker: Yeah, sounds great.
Speaker: Appreciate you having me on.
Speaker: Enjoyed it a ton.
Speaker: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thanks for listening, guys, to the Behind the Boxscore podcast.
