Nichols: Tennessee basketball shoulders blame and leadership, but football could get buried under both

Have you ever found yourself at the bottom of a hole?

Tennessee’s football and basketball programs are both in that situation, jammed together in the darkness.

UT system president Randy Boyd and UT-Knoxville chancellor Donde Plowman may provide a ladder for the football program’s escape, at least if they pick wisely in replacing the following:

- Head football coach Jeremy Pruitt who, along with nine others, was fired for cause on Monday after somehow finding a new rock bottom for a program that once ruled the sport

- Athletic director Phillip Fulmer, who guided the Vols to a 1998 mountaintop but now rides into the sunset on a horse with a gimp and saddlebags stuffed with questions 

But Rick Barnes, head coach of the other Tennessee team that now finds itself in an abyss, has confidence in the administrators’ decision-making.

“This is a great University,” Barnes insisted Tuesday night. “The leadership that is in place right now might be the best I've ever been around. The press conference (Monday) was evident that an athletic director would be lucky to have leadership like Donde Plowman and Randy Boyd.”

Let’s hope his character judgement is correct here. Because Barnes’ biggest fault to this point, aside from no national titles, is his friendship with one major athletic director candidate whose track record at Tennessee can be filed under four words: worked under Dave Hart.

Granted, I was encouraged by the swiftness with which Boyd and Plowman took action on Monday.

But, like many of you, I’ll need to see more than their decision to show Pruitt the door to see how this new regime will flow. This includes an answer on whether the claims they’re making would be as strongly-worded if Pruitt had gone 7-3 instead of 3-7.

As mentioned, though, both the football and basketball programs are stuck.

The difference is how they got there.

For football, former coach Jeremy Pruitt and his staff belly-flopped into the earth with gleeful and reckless abandon, parachuting downward with impermissible benefits, wads of cash and, reportedly, McDonald’s take-out bags that were used to transfer said funds.

You can believe the McDonald’s part or not. Players denied it on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

Either way, Level I NCAA violations (which Plowman confirmed) mean that, at some point, coach/recruiter-to-player transactions likely took place — not unusual in college football, especially in the SEC. But if that money was indeed “disguised” using sacks from America’s fast-food empire, that makes memes such as this all the more delicious:

Back to that ‘stuck in a hole’ part, though: Tennessee football has been there more than a decade. Pruitt found a way to sink the program even lower.

For men’s basketball, Tennessee has only been below ground since Tuesday night.

Before arriving in Gainesville, Rick Barnes and the Vols stood atop this mythical gap, waving to their dollar-dealing football counterparts far below.

When sixth-ranked Tennessee hit the floor to face Florida, however, Knoxville native Ques Glover and the Gators punched Barnes’ team in the mouth — even without three of Florida’s best players on the court.

That sent the Vols toppling from their perch and over the edge, only to fall past rotten Big Macs and land with a thud at the bottom.

Final score: Florida 75, No. 6 Tennessee 49. 

(We both know you chuckled; I did, too. Just admit it and keep moving.)

The loss marked a season-high in points allowed for Tennessee’s defense, with a season-low in points scored for the Vols’ offense.

Only one Tennessee player scored in double-figures, as John Fulkerson overcame several double-teams and two early trips to the bench for 15 points.

Keon Johnson was the only other Vol to come close to double-digits. The freshman finished with eight points in his second career start, as he replaced an injured Jaden Springer (left ankle — hasn’t practiced since the Vanderbilt game).

Johnson and Davonte “Ticket” Gaines were the Vols’ biggest bright spots. Johnson swung on the rim after a monstrous slam to start the second half, while Gaines tied Josiah-Jordan James for a team-high five rebounds despite getting limited minutes.

Make no mistake: the Vols missed Springer badly, and Yves Pons’ foul trouble didn’t help.

But it was Florida’s intensity, matched with Tennessee’s lack of effort and sloppy play, that truly ran the Vols out of the Gators’ gym.

Florida out-rebounded Tennessee 44-36, and the Gators won 42-22 off points in the paint.

Florida also scored 27 points off 11 steals, held a lead that ballooned to as much as 28, and scrapped and fought for loose balls, exhibiting the type of defensive effort typically expected from Tennessee.

Instead, the Vols showed up in the same way the football team did last season: by absorbing haymakers with no response whatsoever.

“It started with the guys that started the game,” Barnes said. “There’s not one guy that started the game that was productive. Then we go to the bench, and not great production there either obviously. We got exactly what we deserved.”

Added John Fulkerson: “I take full credit and full responsibility for what happened tonight. I know that that’s not who we are, so everything can go on me for this loss. Like you said, not being a leader, not getting the guys ready to play, me not coming to play.

“I think we came out just taking their punches and we weren’t throwing any at them,” he continued. “I call myself a leader on this team, so I definitely have to be better.”

And that’s where the similarities stop for the Vols’ football and basketball programs.

In football, the Vols’ coaching staff dove headfirst into scandal, burying itself alive. Plowman and Boyd finished the job Monday afternoon, shielding Fulmer from any possible blame as they scorned hellishly a staff built by the coach Fulmer hired.

(Mind you, this is before the NCAA has even taken action. Whether they should, or at least how aggressively, is another story. Plenty of SEC programs get off scot-free without self-reporting a thing.)

But for Tennessee basketball under Barnes, the approach to any rebuild is starkly different.

Yes, Barnes’ Vols got shoved underground, too, going in as meekly as a seventh-grader who’s been bullied into a locker.

After the Florida loss, though? They shouldered the blame, acknowledged what happened, and will do something that neither Fulmer nor Pruitt could: work their way completely back to the top.

How, you might ask?

Well, let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t want to be on a practice court or anywhere close to a white board with lineup options for this team at any point within the next three days.

“I’m just really disappointed,” Barnes said. “I can tell you this, I don't know what it's going to be, but I will change our lineup. It is going to be changed because I'm not going to let anybody take anything for granted. Thinking that they are just going to walk out there and play, show up and think you're good enough. That's what I felt tonight.

“I don't want to take anything away from Florida and Mike White because they've had a hard year with a lot of different things and going on,” he added. “They deserved to win the game from the start to the finish. It is just disappointing when you get guys that you expect to do some things and then it doesn’t happen. From the get-go. That’s the most disappointing thing.”

Rest assured, Barnes’ team will be back.

At 10-2, it can still leave an incredible legacy this season, just as he has through his coaching career.

The Lady Vols are the same way. Kellie Harper’s program welcomes No. 3 UConn on Thursday, a matchup made all the more bitter considering Geno Auriemma surpassed Pat Summitt’s win total on the same night that the Vols got steamrolled in Gainesville.

Still, Summitt’s impact provides another example of a standard that extends well beyond her victories.

“Pat set the bar really high,” Harper said Tuesday afternoon. “Anybody passing her does not diminish her legacy. It wasn’t about the numbers. It was about her legacy.”

Legacy isn’t just about long-term impact, though. It can be determined in strong first impressions, or within the rippling effects of a major event — like Monday’s press conference.

Rick Barnes and his team are still at the bottom after Tuesday’s loss, but they’re already starting to wriggle their way free.

The Lady Vols remain above the ground, and they’ll stay that way unless something changes drastically on Thursday.

The same goes for Tony Vitello and Tennessee baseball, Ralph and Karen Weekly’s softball program, and any UT athletic endeavor that hasn’t remained the state-wide shame for more than a decade.

No, that honor belongs solely to Tennessee football, with its 104,000-seat cathedral of a stadium and facilities that rival any other program in its conference.

On the gridiron, Tennessee has become tarnished — that much is obvious.

What’s worse, though, is this: without even factoring in NCAA punishments that could linger long after Pruitt is gone, the UT administration has to avoid making even one wrong move in two imminent must-win job appointments, each of which is critical to the future of Tennessee football. 

Otherwise, Plowman, Boyd and their counterparts risk pulling this program even further into the filth, rotting it for another decade or more. 

That’s a lot tougher to digest than one bad night on the hardwood.