The Men's second round at the NCAA

A lot of time is spent understanding who you are going to be playing against, they just don't watch ESPN and go.....we can take them. Rewind, notes, rewind, notes and talk about how they setup their plays.....serious business

Of course, the boys from Virginia are doing the same thing, talking about the last game and how we played against LBS. Working on how to defend us, how to drive into the paint and so on......a cat and mouse game.

One thing about it, when the guys came on the floor they were met with a field of orange with an attitude, only once had the school ever made it past the second round and these folks wanted to get to the next level.

The team was ready as they met at half court before the tip off, one for all and all for one.....the words of Peyton rang out loud and clear....trust your teammates...believe in your teammates.

And so it started, with a two inch advantage to Virginia....

UT has a player named Lofton, and he has won a bunch of SEC awards...percentage of free throws, player of the week and is also known for shooting threes. Well, while Virginia double and triple teamed Lofton.......others on the team started to shoot threes.......and more threes....

You would have thought it was raining threes at one point in the game as it was close, but with great three point shooting they kept is with 6 points.

Everyone was popping in threes, now not everyone went in and that is where Chism comes in....get that rebound.

When they went out to block the threes, in came Lofton to stuff in down their throats....a nice balanced attack.

Smoky loves to roll down the court over the male cheerleader as they roll forward with Smoky on top........a crowd pleaser for sure......:)

So what do you do when half the family went to Virginia and half went to UT......just cheer and cheer loudly.

They were up and I was like....get it over with please....then they were down 6 and I was.,......come on block them out.......then they came back at the end up 4 with just a minute or so left.......and the coach was still working hard.

Now the one person you would want to have the ball in the last few ticks of the clock is Lofton.....and they fouled him and with 6 seconds left all he had to do was sink those two baskets and UT would be in the Sweet 16.....no pressure there....If you were able to watch the game, Lofton with about 30 seconds left had missed the free throws and air went out of the UT fans for about 4 seconds.......so here we are again, believing in yourself, believing in your abilities and making it happen.

They both went in and with the final buzzer, the UT Men's Basketball team was on it's way to the Sweet16 for only the second time in history.

The cheerleaders have spent the entire season working for the guys, cheering, yelling and to see them move on to the next level.....well they were just as excited and there were group hugs all around......it's not a team effort, it more like a family effort for these kids.

So as the Men move on to Austin, TX the Lady Vols having spent the weekend in Pittsburgh are moving onto Dayton, OH and we will be hooking up with them on Thursday as they move on to the Sweet16.