No. 23 Tennessee dropped a 79-64 decision last night to Div. II Indianapolis, marking the first time in Bruce Pearl’s tenure the Volunteers have been defeated by such lowly opposition. While the result won’t do much to improve the mood of the recently humbled Pearl, Searching For Billy Edelin’s Dave Ryan prefers to look on the bright side ; “uually the Vols wait until their non-conference schedule actually kicks off to lose to a terrible basketball team.”
The problem was that Pearl’s team literally forgot how to score to open up the second half, allowing the Division II Greyhounds to go on a nice 15-0 run. The Vols were too busy coughing up the ball to ever mount a serious threat again after that, and were promptly trounced 79-64. Along with committing 25 turnovers, the Vols shot just 51% from the line and bricked on 22 of 29 three point attempts. It was simply awful, awful stuff out of this game last night. Guard Melvin Goins called the defeat “an embarrassment to ourselves and to our fans.” Unfortunately for Melvin, he forgot the part about this being an embarrassment to the sport itself. Is the domain FireBrucePearl.com taken yet?