Had a chance to spend an hour with with the three new hoops assistants this morning and we'll have a lot of content out of it over the next week or so but wanted to pass along a few interesting things.
One of the more intriguing things from the day was listening to Rob Lanier talk about the perception of this job from the outside and what he's learned about the program and the fan base since being here for a month. He is amazed and very pleasantly surprised at the passion and support he has found here. As an assistant coach at Florida under Billy D. Lanier obviously knew about the facilities and the campus but he indicated he had been blown away by the support from the fans.
I asked him for some examples of that and he pointed out that since leaving Texas, which is a prominent program in his own right, his amount of Twitter followers has tripled.
He went to make a great point that at Texas and Florida fans pay attention to basketball when it's good, and he added that he felt that both Barnes and Donovan had 'put a dent' in the perception of hoops at those two schools. However, in his mind, what Tennessee has that neither of those places have is a built in passion for hoops from a percentage of the fanbase that is present no matter what. His point was, you can't manufacture that. Really perceptive guy that is a lot of fun to talk to.
A lot of people know that he and Des Oliver are really good friends working together for the first time professionally. They were each the best man at the other's wedding and have known each other for over 30 years, starting as children in Buffalo. Lanier had a great story that shed some light on their roots, explaining that his family didn't have a phone, so when he was being recruited college coaches would call Oliver's house to leave messages and set up meetings.
Coach Odgen had some good anecdotes about Barnes having known him so long and shed some light on how things went down the weekend that Barnes was hired here. Ogden related that he was unemployed for about five hours. He said that 'the hammer got dropped on us at Texas at about 3 in the afternoon, at 8 that night I was in the backyard with some friends, coach Barnes told me that he was going to do a press conference at Texas on Sunday and then we were flying to Tennessee to take the job here.'
Just a few nuggets off the top of my head, will have much more going forward.
One of the more intriguing things from the day was listening to Rob Lanier talk about the perception of this job from the outside and what he's learned about the program and the fan base since being here for a month. He is amazed and very pleasantly surprised at the passion and support he has found here. As an assistant coach at Florida under Billy D. Lanier obviously knew about the facilities and the campus but he indicated he had been blown away by the support from the fans.
I asked him for some examples of that and he pointed out that since leaving Texas, which is a prominent program in his own right, his amount of Twitter followers has tripled.
He went to make a great point that at Texas and Florida fans pay attention to basketball when it's good, and he added that he felt that both Barnes and Donovan had 'put a dent' in the perception of hoops at those two schools. However, in his mind, what Tennessee has that neither of those places have is a built in passion for hoops from a percentage of the fanbase that is present no matter what. His point was, you can't manufacture that. Really perceptive guy that is a lot of fun to talk to.
A lot of people know that he and Des Oliver are really good friends working together for the first time professionally. They were each the best man at the other's wedding and have known each other for over 30 years, starting as children in Buffalo. Lanier had a great story that shed some light on their roots, explaining that his family didn't have a phone, so when he was being recruited college coaches would call Oliver's house to leave messages and set up meetings.
Coach Odgen had some good anecdotes about Barnes having known him so long and shed some light on how things went down the weekend that Barnes was hired here. Ogden related that he was unemployed for about five hours. He said that 'the hammer got dropped on us at Texas at about 3 in the afternoon, at 8 that night I was in the backyard with some friends, coach Barnes told me that he was going to do a press conference at Texas on Sunday and then we were flying to Tennessee to take the job here.'
Just a few nuggets off the top of my head, will have much more going forward.
