I am typing this only a hour or so after the Vols thoroughly dominated Mercer (especially on the glass) to bulldoze their way into the NCAA Sweet 16. The Vols are simply rolling right now in all facets of the game. The contributors are many, but it all starts with Stokes in the post scoring and pulling down rebounds like an extra pissed off Charles Oakley. Jarnell scored 17 points and hauled in 18 boards tonight. Josh Richardson has likely been the Vols best overall player on both ends. He scored a career high 26 points tonight, and he is clamping down defensively on scorers throughout this hot stretch for UT. Barton, Maymon, McRae and others are playing lights out too. The final score of 83-63 could have been worse. It felt worse at times.
It is obvious listening to comments from Stokes and others that the Vols have a massive chip on their collective shoulder right now because of the heat that Coach Cuonzo Martin took earlier this year when the Vols were losing games they had no business losing. For instance, there's no way this team should have lost TWICE to Texas A&M. I think it was fair for UT fans to question this team and whether or not Martin was the long term answer. However, I think that it clearly went too far when sensationalism was introduced via a Clay Travis blog post in which he broached the topic of a petition to get Coach Pearl back into the fold. Of course Clay made a compelling case, and he has enough zealot followers that petitions starting popping up immediately.
Any fan base is susceptible to group think, and that is what kicked in with the petitions gaining steam. Group think is a powerful force that has done much worse than put a coach on the hot seat. Group think allowed the Bay of Pigs debacle to occur, and it caused the Challenger launch/explosion. It almost caused the Volunteer fan base to explode as well, but fan group think did the exact opposite to the UT basketball team. It caused them to galvanize together and play for their coach with fearless abandon. Had UT fans not gone down a silly path, would the Vols have hit that extra gear? Would they be in the Sweet 16? Those are legit questions in my opinion.
I fell victim to group think in this instance as I had a very brief stretch in which I was even clamoring for Pearl. However, I soon realized that it was simply foolishness to even think that Coach Martin who was 20 games over .500 at UT was on the hot seat, and I returned to sane thinking. I should have never allowed the Pearl talk to even penetrate my mind because it was foolish to even consider that might happen. I should have taken my own advice from January 2012 when I encouraged Volunteer fans to "go all in" with Coach Cuonzo Martin. It's been more than two years since I wrote that blog post, but I think Volunteer fans finally went all in with Martin tonight. Let's just hope that his players don't find out. I like them better with a Big Orange chip on their shoulder.
