Just Call Them the Tennessee Thugs....

Once again Tennessee has an athletic department that's in the news for the wrong reason. This time it's the men's basketball program, which as of late has been the best team the university has to offer.

Four players have been suspended indefinitely for gun, alcohol, and marijuana charges. Of the four players that are suspended senior Tyler Smith is by far the biggest name out of the bunch.

The other three players are junior Brian Williams, junior Melvin Goins, and sophomore Cameron Tatum. All of these guys were averaging over 15 minutes a game, so this will be a huge loss for Tennessee from a basketball standpoint.

Bruce Pearl has already made a statement saying how disgusted he is by the actions of his players and that it's an embarrassment to the university.

What is it with Tennessee signing all of these guys that just simply can't stay out of trouble. All of this comes just a few months after three football players were charged with armed robbery. Two of those players were kicked off the team.

At least Tennessee is taking action immediately when things like this are happening. Both Lane Kiffin and Bruce Pearl showed zero tolerance for actions of this nature and that's at least somewhat comforting if you're a Tennessee fan.

If things like this continue then recruiting will take a major hit. The athletic department will be associated with nothing but bad things and that's never a good recruiting tool.

The basketball program is continuing to be a regular in the top 15 and the football program is gradually starting to climb its way out of the abyss. With that said, coaches have to start getting more control over their players to keep negative things like this from happening anymore to the University of Tennessee.

Vandy Allegedly Defeats Tar Heels in Private Scrimmage

Ok before you start going crazy Vandy fans, this alleged defeat of the Tar Heels in a private scrimmage is not completely official. However, thanks to many sources ( another source) there is reason to believe that it is true.

To give a quick history lesson, fellow coaches Kevin Stallings and Roy Williams are former Kansas alumni and they agreed to a home and home private scrimmage prior to the 2008 season.

Apparently the NCAA allows teams to have one private scrimmage to their choosing per season.

Last season's exhibition game was in the Chapel Hill, North Carolina area and the eventual national champs made work of the young Vandy team and won by around 20.

Just recently however it is speculated that Vandy won this time around by double digits without the services of AJ Ogilvy. Much of this information comes from tweets ( I can't belive I'm using that word) from players invovled with the teams.

Now if this is true, then when the hell does basketball season start?? Forget football season!

In all seriousness, there is already great things happening with Vandy men's basketball, and all of these you can definitely confirm are true.

First off, coach Stallings took the team out to Australia over the offseason to compete against professional and semi-professional teams that obviously had a lot more experience than these kids that wear the black and gold.

Despite playing much more experienced players, the Commodores won three of their five games in the land down under and that is something you should be happy about if you're a Vandy fan.

If you follow the men's basketball team closely then you've already heard about this great recruiting class that's coming in for the 2010 season. Two of the recruits in this class are ranked in the top 50 in the nation.

They were recently picked to finish third in the SEC East by the media, but my SEC basketball preview will be coming up shortly so stick around for that!

It would not surprise me if this rumor is true. We see upsets all the time in college basketball and an upset in an exhibition game is even more possible.

A small D-II school in Syracuse called Le Moyne defeated No. 25 Syracuse this past week by three in an exhibition game that was not private, so these things can definitely happen.