Duke Crews out indefinitely with heart condition

The News-Sentinel posted a story this afternoon saying that the sports medicine team at UT identified a heart issue with Duke Crews. All student-athletes have echocardiograms done and in Duke’s case they found a problem. The story is here.

We will all be thinking about Duke and hoping that he’ll be fine. Basketball is certainly secondary when someone tells you that your ticker is having trouble. Rest easy and get well, Duke.

On the court, expect to see more of this:

 

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.

Random thoughts and stats

• This should surprise nobody: Ken Pomeroy’s consistency statistic, which is basically a standard deviation of a team’s performance in its games, shows Tennessee to be #332 out of 341 teams in consistency of play. I think any Tennessee fan paying attention could have bet it would be pretty low.
• West Virginia continues to kill people. They dismantled Auburn last night in the SEC/Big East Invitational and remain #1 in pythag. They have the #6 offense and the #3 defense in the country. If you ask me, the coaches and writers that picked WVU 10th in the Big East are going to look silly by March.
• Gonzaga lost a tight one to Wazzou last night. Folks, if you weren’t worried about the Zags, you should be. I’ve seen them play a little here and there this year, and they are going to be a very good team. They’ve been inconsistent, just as Tennessee has, but the talent and coaching are excellent. They are currently #20 in pythag.
• Repeat the last bullet for Xavier, except they haven’t lost and they’ve been remarkably consistent. They are #3 in pythag, behind only WVU and Duke, and have the #4 offense in the nation.
• Western Kentucky is no joke either (pythag #68). If you haven’t already, look at our December schedule. We play WKU (neutral), Xavier (away), and Gonzaga (semi-neutral– Seattle) in a two week span to close out the calendar year. That is brutal.
• The SEC is going to be impossible to predict this year. Vanderbilt has been pretty consistent. Ole Miss is off to a good start. Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and just about everyone else in the league has been very inconsistent. This is a great opportunity for Tennessee to win a league title, but we’re going to have to find our game between now and January.
• If I had a vote, the Death Star would be the first big man off the bench against WKU. I don’t have a vote, but I can bet Bruce is strongly considering this and will give it a lot of thought in the next week or so as the Vols wrap up the semester and prepare for WKU. J.P. Prince can potentially join the wing/guard rotation as well, if he’s ready to play after shoulder surgery.
• I’m excited that Renaldo Woolridge is going to be a Vol. He’ll play the 3, most likely, despite being in the 6′8″-6′10″ range. An astute poster on the Hooopsville forum compared his game and body to Corey Brewer. Boy, wouldn’t that be nice. Check out a great video of him here.

The game is a sellout, Crews won’t play, and other random thoughts

• Thompson-Boling Arena will be full tonight. A packed house for the opener against a team picked to finish from the middle-to-bottom of their conference. Wow. Let that sink in for a little while. Tennessee men’s basketball, former redheaded step-child of the UTAD, is drawing a sellout crowd in one of the largest college arenas in the country for a nonconference game against a team that finished last season with a losing record. It’s been a sellout for a couple of weeks, but I guess it didn’t sink in until I read on Hoopsville that basketball tickets for tonight are selling for a higher price on Ebay than the football tickets for tomorrow are.
• Let’s temper the enthusiasm from the previous bullet point a bit. I guarantee you that a few hundred– maybe more than a thousand– big money seats will go unused tonight. As excited as 90% of the fanbase is about BruceBall, the culture around here has still not changed completely. It takes time.
• According to Bruce, Duke Crews has been limited in practice and is doubtful to play tonight. Considering we have a strong 10-man rotation without him, I think the coaching staff will play it safe and he won’t dress.
• Thinking about that 10-man rotation and Duke Crews . . . what happens when he returns? For that matter, what happens in late December or early January when J.P. Prince comes back from shoulder surgery and is eligible and ready to play? I doubt anybody expects those two to ride the pine, considering what we know about Duke and what we’ve heard about J.P. Will Bruce and Co. really stick to a 10-man rotation, as he has indicated, or will he use that as a motivator for all the players to stay hungry? It’s very, very hard for me to imagine that those two won’t play . . . and equally as hard to find 2 guys currently in the rotation that Bruce would bench in favor of them.
• Brian Williams has been called “Big Baby” by his teammates since he arrived in campus. Various message board discussions have determined that this nickname sucks, if only because the SEC had another “Big Baby” for a few years– a “Big Baby” that we all hated. Bruce, ever the kind and thoughtful coach, helped us out and inadvertently chose another nickname for the 6′10″, 270 lb freshman.

That’s no moon . . . it’s Brian Williams.

 

• Speaking of the Death Star, Bruce continues to say that there’s a battle for the starting center position between Williams and Wayne Chism. Is he serious? I think those of us who saw Williams in the exhibition games could see the potential and what he has to offer, but does Bruce really think he’s ready to start over Chism? We were all pretty excited about Chism’s future at the end of last season, as I recall. I think Bruce is just challenging Wayne to work hard and play more consistently. He’s been very vocal publicly about this competition for the starting spot . . . maybe more than you’d expect. So I’d guess that’s exactly what he’s doing.