Vols' NCAA streak under Jerry Green looks pretty good now

Tennessee basketball fans are monitoring bracketology. Cautiously optimistic, they’re dying to return to March Madness.

Three years on the outside of one of sport’s great spectacles seems like forever. It’s not.

Let’s turn the clock back 20 years to a watershed season of sorts, a time when frustration had dug deep roots at Thompson-Boling Arena.

The Jerry Green era of Vol hoops is not fondly remembered by many. And yet the impartial numbers on a page suggest heady success. A curious four years it was.

But in January of 1998 we had no idea how perplexing things were going to get.

Green was in his first season at UT. He was Doug Dickey’s out-of-left-field hire to replace petulant Kevin O’Neill. Not the first choice, Green acknowledged, but the right choice.

Green arrived to a program that that hadn’t won an NCAA tournament game since 1983, hadn’t even been invited since 1989, which was also the most recent appearance in the rankings.

The former Army MP with a South Carolina country twang inherited a talented roster, the fruit of O’Neill’s recruiting magic, and a 10-0 start warmed up a wary fan base.

Fool’s gold? A Jan. 24 loss – 20 years ago this week – to Kentucky left Green’s Vols 1-5 in SEC play.

But then they won nine of their final 12 games and landed a No. 8 seed in the NCAA bracket. Tennessee was dancing again.

The Vols would dance in each of Green’s four seasons. They would win the SEC East in 1999 – sweeping Kentucky – and share the overall league title in 2000. They would rise as high as No. 4 in the polls (twice) in 2000-01.

Green would win 71.2 percent of his games at Tennessee (89-36) – better than Bruce Pearl’s 70.4 mark to come.

And yet Green would be fired in March 2001 after a first-round loss to UNC Charlotte in Dayton. I remember looking across the court that day at the UT official party in the stands. You could tell from then-president J. Wade Gilley’s grim demeanor that Green was done.

Green (not unlike Butch Jones) left Tennessee feeling unappreciated. He also (not unlike Jones) left the program better than he found it. The Vols were relevant again, if only temporarily. He sustained O’Neill’s recruiting run by landing in-state talents Vincent Yarbrough, Ron Slay and Marcus Haislip.

Still, Green’s tenure at UT must be viewed primarily as a missed opportunity.

Over time, he alienated the fans, famously inviting them to spend their time at “the Kmart” if they didn’t like what they saw on the court. Ultimately, he alienated the administration, too.

His rosters were more talented than the ones with which Pearl would work wonders a decade later. That said, it’s unfair to dismiss Green as a complete coaching dunce. I watched his teams win a bunch of big games in tough joints.

I always felt Green would have been viewed more favorably had his teams advanced just one more step in March.

If the ’98 team had survived Illinois State, there’s no shame losing to No. 1 seed Arizona. If the ’99 team hadn’t bombed against Missouri State, a loss to No. 1 seed Duke in Charlotte could be forgiven.

And if the 2000 team hadn’t let North Carolina off the Sweet 16 hook … well, ouch.

At any rate, 20 years ago Tennessee was entering an enigmatic chapter. Today, those four straight NCAA bids would be mighty welcome. Maybe the Vols could do more with them.