Breakfast with Tubby

This morning I attended the Dunker's meeting with my father-in-law and Tubby Smith was the guest speaker. Let's just start out by saying that we won the lottery with this guy. He was kind of all over the place with his comments (talked about his family, his wife, old coaching days) but overall you can tell that this guy is a winner and knows how to coach kids. What was really surprising was how funny he was. He talked about how he is in the process of setting goals with all of his players. He mentioned that forward Jonathan Williams goal is to lead the Big Ten in rebounds. Tubby then went on to say that after the Army game on Saturday Williams had 1 rebound and Tubby told Williams that "well, you got more rebounds today than a dead guy so you're gonna need to work on that goal of yours." Might have been funnier at the time.

Overall Tubby said his team is gonna surprise some people this year. I sat next to a season ticket holder who went to the game and said that Tollickson has dropped 30 pounds and looks great and Dan Coleman put on 30 pounds and is a player now. This guy also said that from the first minute of the game there was a different feel - the hustle never ended with guys going all out for loose balls and we actually played defense.

What was hilarious was that Sid was there and has been apparently seething over the fact that Tubby has not come on his radio show since being named coach 6 months ago. Tubby ribbed Sid a bit saying he would most definitely be on his show soon and that he knew Sid wasn't too mad because Tubby was still being called "his close personal friend."

As for the Army game, Gauck got it right, Monson's team would have lost that one whereas Tubby's team stepped on their neck. BTW - see Monson's new team Long Beach State put up 34 points in a 74 - 34 loss to BYU?