Once Every 44 Years

J.P. Prince and Wayne Chism celebrate the Vols' upset 76-68 win over number one Kansas on Sunday. Photo by Saul Young.

We only do football here at VITF. No windows. No floors. No dishes. No laundry. Not even basketball.

But we’d be guilty of breaking the Student-Athlete Manual if we didn’t give a shout of Hell Yes to the Bruce Pearl Gang.

On Sunday, Tennessee defeated top-ranked Kansas 76-68, and, according to the CBS announcers, the first time since 1966 that the Vols have defeated the Nation’s Number One team in Knoxville.

Only six scholarship players were left for Sunday’s game after Tyler Smith’s guns-and-drugs foolery left the bench in near-tatters.

Somewhere during the first half, the Orange and White pulled the number-one Jayhawks out of their game and down into an Ugly Basketball Pit. After that, Tennessee had Kansas by the shorthairs pretty much the rest of the afternoon.

It took players with names like Skylar McBee, a walk-on freshman, to make crazies like heaving up near-blind three-point heaves with a couple of seconds on the shot clock to make this historic result happen.

But that’s not completely fair. J.P. Prince, Renaldo Woolridge, Wayne Chism, Bobby Maze, and Scotty Hopson played well, with guts and togetherness, to lead the Vols.

However, Coach Pearl will undoubtedly have his boys at the free-throw line for a few hundred a day as the Vols shot a skinny 52% from the line. But they still won. That’s because they were able to out-shoot Kansas from the field, 48% to 38%, including 50% to 26% from the 3-point stripe. And because they just somehow got it done.

Let’s hope there’s more to come to help wipe the stench out of our collective mouths, left over from the guns, the drugs, the suspensions, and the stupidity that came out of the AD office this past week.

Roll On, Vols.