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Cool, thanks for posting!

I didn't realize Jerry Green had as many good seasons. Why was he fired again?

He was a LOT like you

At one point, he insulted Tennessee fans publicly and so was very unpopular.  I thought he did pretty well, all things considered, but I guess he ran his mouth at the wrong time.

I believe at one point he had a starting five of Harris, Wharton, Yarbrough, Black, and Victor, with Slay coming off the bench.That was hands down our most talented team ever, and they underacheived massively.

He completely lost that team. He was such an #badword# that they had no respect for him. Then he gets on the radio with Bob and invites Tennessee fans to just go shopping at K-Mart if they don’t like the way his team is underachieving.

There’s a reason no one hired Green after UT fired him.

And then we got them awesome Buzz Peterson years. Like me, you mean not wearing orange tinted glasses 24/7 and not just telling sheep what they want to hear. But a lot folks are just too comfortable being told what the want to hear.

Just stop. If you had been around back then, you would've been calling for Green's head two years before anyone else.

My lasting image of that season will always be Tony Harris, who was "injured" and in a walking boot for a game against Kentucky(?), jumping off the bench and sprinting to the other end of the floor to participate in a brawl. :banghead:

Absolutely. I was going to add that very comment to my post and didn't.

It's just me, but I always thought the talk of Green under-achieving was over done.  Yes, we had a lot of talent, but we did reasonably well.  Green was mostly disliked because he was kind of an a$$hole IMO.

Jerry Green's entire tenure at Tennessee can be summed up in that loss to North Carolina in the Sweet 16 round in Austin, March 2000. Yes, UT made it to the Sweet 16 for the first time ever, but it could've accomplished so much more...which is what you can say about the Green era overall. Tennessee was GIFTED a Final Four berth that year. It should've been a cakewalk. Stanford, Cincinnati and Ohio State were the top three seeds in the region and they had all been beaten. #5 (UConn) was eliminated by the Vols. #6 and #7 had been beaten. Tennessee was the only one of the top 7 seeds in the bracket still alive. North Carolina was not good that year. And Tennessee was up +9 late in the game. And then the team just started running wild, doing their own thing, and Green couldn't corral them. I remember that game like it was yesterday. Tennessee jacked up one awful 3-point shot after another, and UNC just casually came back to win it.

That 2000-2001 season was an abject failure. After a 16-1 start, Green lost his team for good. Defense wasn't even a part of the game. Remember giving up 103 to Kentucky? Remember UGA (they were terrible that year) slinking into TBA and winning by double-digits? Remember Ron Slay admitting that they would just go out and screw around for 30 minutes and then look up and realize they were behind? They lost 7 out of 8 games in SEC play...went from 4-1 to 5-8 with a roster that SHOULD have been good enough to make it to the Final 4.

Yeah, Green wasn't liked because of his piss-poor attitude and that's ultimately what did him in...I mean, if Rick Barnes starts 16-1 next year then finishes 21-9 with a .500 conference record, I'm pretty sure he's not going to be in danger of being fired. But if you're going to be a complete prick, you better win the games you're supposed to and your players better not act like a bunch of out-of-control punks.

That is true. I was overseas at that time. But being a nice guy as a coach doesn't mean you should be excused for losing games you are supposed to win either.

I remember the NC game also, it was very frustrating.  But I think what played a part also is that NC had been there done that before, while our squad was pretty inexperienced in the tourney.

Did the Vols underachieve with Green?  Given all the talent, yes, but not as much as some would say and you can't get away from the fact that his record is much better than his two predecessors and the guy that followed him.   His overall performance is just a smidge worse than Devoe in fact.

I will concede that we could have been better with all the talent, and his last season was a disaster but he still was much better than Wade, O'Neill, and Buzz.  At least we were relevant when he was coach.

Let's not forget why UT was relevant with Green. He landed some nice recruits, for sure. But, by and large, he won with O'Neill's kids. Kevin O'Pottymouth set the stage for what was to come. His personal disagreements with Dickie caused him to leave before he could harvest the fruits of his labor.