IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT’SSSSSSSSSSSS MONDAY!!!!!!
And you Tennessee Volunteer-loving folks know what that means it’s time for. Let’s head up to the cliffs in our orange and white speedos and swimming caps and swan dive into an ocean of Vols-related thoughts sloshing around inside my mind.
1) Tennessee is back to number one in the country among the college baseball polls. Not a bad place to be. I don’t agree with the folks calling it a curse or saying it’s a bad thing. Being recognized as the best should always be a good thing, rat poison aside.
2) Now, the Vols will have to prove it, as they head to Nashville to take on a Vanderbilt team more than capable of claiming the series against Tennessee. The Vols have all the momentum having won seven straight SEC series and at the top of the polls and one game back in the SEC East. However, Vanderbilt knocking off Tennessee would go a very long way towards getting them both back in the polls and enhancing their tournament resume. It had better be a “not today, Satan” mentality by the Vols against their rivals trying to pull the upset.
3) Dalton Knecht is expected to be a top 10 pick in next month’s draft, per the NBA itself. The league sent out a report to all teams with players’ composite rankings listed.
The NBA sent teams a composite ranking of the Top 10 2024 draft prospects, as determined by a blend of publicly available rankings, a panel of experts and a retained-scouting service. This determines which teams will receive medical results based on which tiers players fall in.… pic.twitter.com/Nl4IeyjYWq
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) May 3, 2024
Knecht is joined by Kentucky’s Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham in that same bracket of players. We’ll know who the top 10 teams are when the NBA lottery takes place on Sunday. That should narrow down the range of teams that Knecht could end up with.
4) James Pearce, Jr. is getting AAAAAAAA LOOOOOOOOOOT of hype as the top overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Several way-too-early 2025 mock drafts have him going as the top overall pick to whoever is there. In the ones I’ve seen, that’s Carolina, but that of course could be a number of teams, as the NFL is a cyclical league. Regardless, it’s clear he’s going to have a lot of eyeballs on him this year, particularly among NFL scouts and general managers. A big year for him, and he should be the Vols’ highest drafted player in a long time. And that, of course, would mean great things for the Vols’ defense this fall.
Go Vols!