I have laughed about this line for two days, Thank you Mr.  Stallings, you have a keen sense of the obvious. For Pearl to have won the SEC, gone to two sweet sixteens and won 42 out of 44 games at home I would think we would have to score.

Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl has been quick to earn national respect on most all counts.

But some of his fellow SEC basketball coaches seem reluctant to praise him for his technical and strategical coaching abilities.

Take Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings, for example.

Stallings, regarded as one of the better Xs and Os coaches in the league, suggested at SEC basketball media days on Thursday that too much is made of the Vols’ style.

“They’re only trying to keep you from getting the ball inbounds,” Stallings said. “Once you get it in, they play like everyone else plays.”

Stallings said that while UT is indeed good at defending the out-of-bounds plays, the key to Pearl’s success at UT has been talent.

“They are good because they have good players,” Stallings said, “and they’ve been able to score.”

Pearl said he is proud of the talent the Vols have had since his arrival.

“We have put our talent in position to be successful, and to their credit, they have been unselfish,” Pearl said.

National award committees, however, have obviously felt Pearl has had a heavy hand in Tennessee’s success.

Pearl was named the Sporting News National Coach of the Year in 2006 and captured the Adolph Rupp Cup National Coach of the Year award last season.

Pearl has been the SEC Coach of the Year two of the three years he has been in the league, in 2006 and 2008.

CBS has twice used Pearl at the Final Four as an analyst, and the Vols are finding themselves in more nationally televised games than ever before.

But ask Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie about the Wildcats’ relative success against the Vols last season – they beat UT 72-66 in Lexington and fell just 63-60 in Thompson-Boling Arena despite missing All-SEC center Patrick Patterson – and he minimizes coaching.

“We made shots to beat them,” Gillispie said, “they made shots to beat us.”

One reporter in Birmingham asked all of the coaches at media days who they would select as the best coach in the SEC.

Pearl was the only coach to answer that question: “Billy Donovan.”

And yet, in the past Donovan has been one of the coaches to dismiss Pearl’s “Controlled Chaos” press as anything more than token pressure.

Pearl said he’s not concerned with what other coaches attribute his success to.

“I don’t want to comment on any of that, but I will say there are a lot of aspects to the job,” Pearl said. “Coaching is important, recruiting is important, and discipline and education are important.

“I had a great teacher in Tom Davis, and I’m confident in the system we teach,” Pearl said. “Tactically, I’m always talking to different coaches and watching the Olympics and the NBA for new ideas.

“I think the key is, can you do it at different levels, and can you do it with different teams?”

Pearl will have the chance to prove he can do just that; the Vols return only six players from last year’s team heading into the exhibition opener against Indianapolis at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 at Thompson-Boling Arena.