Sports Radio Interviews

Bruce Pearl and the Tennessee Volunteers Will Have Their Hands Full in the Sweet Sixteen with Ohio State and a “young Kobe Bryant”

I will admit that when the tournament started, the first upset that I looked at on my bracket was San Diego State taking out Tennessee.  Now, I had some other upsets as well, but Tennessee was a team that I thought should be on upset alert.  I honestly thought they were a little overrated and when they lost Tyler Smith because of his troubles off the court, I didn’t think there was any way they would survive without their best player.  Boy was I wrong.  Not only have the Volunteers survived, they have made it to the Sweet Sixteen for the third time in five years.  Now Bruce Pearl and the Volunteers are looking to get to the Elite Eight for the first time in the history of the program.  However, if they want to do that, they are going to have to get past the new favorite in the Midwest Region, Ohio State.  Not only does Ohio State have the best player in the country, they also have one of the best starting units as well.  When Kansas went down, the road to Indianapolis in the Midwest region looked to be paved in Scarlet and Grey.  Tennessee is looking to change all that with an upset on Friday night.

Bruce Pearl joined ESPN 1050 in New York with Michael Kay to talk about how happy he is to be in the Sweet Sixteen after everything that has happened with his team this year, whether or not he thought he would be at this point after having to remove Tyler Smith from the team, and how difficult it is going to be to game plan for Evan Turner.

On how happy he is to be in the Sweet Sixteen:

“I think it’s great.  Everybody at this time of the year, you’ve gotta have resiliency, you’ve gotta find ways to win, teams have had injuries, and different changes in the lineup and so on and so forth and it’s just about surviving and advancing.  Very, very proud of my basketball team.  This is the third time in five years we’ve been to the Sweet Sixteen and our program has never been to the Elite Eight.  So we’re one win away from going some place that Tennessee has never been before, but Ohio State is going to be a formidable task.”

On whether or not he thought he would be at this point after what happened with his time midway through the season:

“Bonnie (Bernstein),  I don’t know.  You don’t know what you have until you start the season.  Then you put a team together, then you get a couple of changes in the roster, and all of a sudden again you don’t know what you really have.  At the beginning of January we were faced with a situation where we were going to be playing Kansas, Charlotte, Auburn, and Ole Miss and we were only going to have six scholarship players.  You’re thinking maybe the season is over at that point, but we found a way to win those games with six scholarship players and three walk-ons.  Then little by little we got most of our guys back short of our best player, Tyler Smith.  Every time we got somebody back, we got a little bit better, we came a little bit closer as a  family and obviously its terrifically rewarding because we’ve had 12 or 13 guys play major roles at different times in our team’s success.”

On where Evan Turner ranks in terms of player’s that he has coached against:

“He’s probably one of the top five for sure.  He’s a monster.  He’s such a tough matchup because he’s a big point guard and if you guard him with somebody that is close to his size, he’s probably gonna have a quickness advantage and theyre gonna put that guy in ball screen situations that they’ve never been involved in before.  If you guard him with somebody smaller, then he’s gonna go inside and hurt you there.  Thad Matta does a wonderful job of putting his kids in situations to be successful and creating difficult matchups for the opponent as far as scouting is concerned.  He’s a great competitor but without question the key to their team.”

On who Evan Turner reminds him of:

“Would it be too simple to say Kobe?  He’s a 6 foot 7 point guard.  A guy that can come off of screens, can turn corners, and get to the rim.  He doesn’t shoot it like Kobe shoots it, but I would say a young Kobe Bryant.”

On how he feels about upsets in the NCAA Tournament:

“I think they’re great for the tournament Bonnie.  I think it’s what it is all about.  People in Kansas, they gotta get over the fact, part of it is a lack of respect for other programs.  If it happened to Kentucky it would be the same thing.  They’d be flipping their minds.  You don’t understand.  I saw Villanova-St Mary’s.  I watched the game in Providence and St Mary’s played better and Villanova’s talent wasn’t that much better.  Certainly had nobody inside to guard the big.  I think there is great parity in college basketball.  Why?  Because you’ve got 13 scholarships on the men’s side and 15 on the women’s side.  That’s a big difference.  When I got down to six scholarship players, it was rough.  I think it’s good.  I don’t know how TV feels about it.  I don’t know if television is excited to go to St Louis without Kansas in that regional, but I think the fans are certainly excited and I think it’s good for college basketball.”

Listen to Bruce Pearl on ESPN 1050 in New York here (Audio begins 27:30 into the podcast)

Tags: 2010 NCAA Tournament, 2010 Sweet Sixteen, Bruce Pearl, College Basketball, Tennessee Volunteers, Tennessee Volunteers basketball, Tennessee vs Ohio State Sweet Sixteen