Color me confused

In this article on GoVolsXtra, Bruce Pearl is trying to help clarify the player rotation, how J.P. Prince will affect it, and what happens with Death Star and Cameron Tatum. Of the freshmen, he says, “so that’s what we’re wrestling with. I want to keep them both ready, and we’ll have to see how things go throughout the season, whether they’re eligible for a redshirt situation.”

This topic has been discussed repeatedly regarding football players, and to my knowledge the rules are the same for basketball and football. Barring serious injury early in the year, no player can redshirt if he has participated in a regular season game. Tatum and Williams have both participated in multiple games this year, so how could they possibly redshirt? That would only be possible if injury kept them from playing. We know for sure that Williams had his knee banged up, but he’s played since then. Tatum has no injuries to my knowledge.

So how can either redshirt? I’ll admit I’m easily confused, but these comments have me perplexed. Hopefully we’ll find out soon what Bruce will do with these guys, and get some clarification on why they may be able to redshirt.

The rest of the article talks about what will happen when J.P. Prince becomes eligible for the Dec. 15 game against Western Kentucky. Bruce is pretty matter of fact about that with these quotes:

“J.P. is going to be in the nine. He’s going to take minutes from Ramar (Smith) or Jordan (Howell), Josh Tabb or JaJuan (Smith). One of those guys will come out, or (Prince) takes some minutes from all of them and the rotation will be 10, (but) I’m leaning toward a nine-man rotation with one of those four guys getting pulled out.”

“We’ve got (many days) of practice coming up, and I promise you, Ramar, Jordan, Josh and JaJuan will be fighting to keep J.P. Prince out of the rotation.”

That’s pretty clear. J.P. must have really impressed Bruce in practice, which is exactly what we heard from people who had viewed practices before J.P. was hurt. Pearl has no doubt Prince will be in the rotation and it’s just a matter of who misses out. This creates a really interesting situation for the four guards mentioned above.

It also makes me wonder if Bruce hasn’t just been biding his time for the last few games, not really settling on a rotation or assignment of minutes until Prince returns. Clearly he thinks Prince changes everything, so the rotation is going to be affected considerably.

If you ask me, Josh Tabb and Ramar Smith are the two that have to show Bruce something in practice the next week. Tabb hasn’t played poorly but his impact has been hard to notice at times. Smith has been noticeably inconsistent and has shown little progress from a year ago. It’s hard for me to imagine that JaJuan Smith or Jordan Howell will sit.

Pay attention, folks. The season was already fun to watch, and it’s going to get a lot more interesting in the next week or two.