As requested, we now have Dooley 2012 car decals available for purchase at the Gameday Depot Rocky Top Talk store. We should receive them sometime next week and will ship pre-orders out in the order they're received. Thanks all.

Rucker's 1-on-1 with coach Dooley is good stuff and sheds some light on the apparent dissonance between Dooley's praise of kicker Michael Palardy and Palardy's spring stats, namely that there's a translation-from-practice-to-game problem that they're hoping can be resolved with some mental conditioning.

Based on an off-the-cuff remark from Rucker, it appears that there's also an article on the way featuring a comment from Dooley about his frustration that Wilcox's defense last year didn't make enough big plays despite otherwise solid statistics. According to Rucker -- and doesn't this sound good -- "Sounds like they will attack, attack, attack on defense and take the risks."

Sal Sunseri likes spring symmetry. Add to the growing file on the Mysterious Tennessee Defense of 2012 that the "free" and "strong" safeties might be morphing back into mere "left" and "right" safeties. Lots of talk of "mirroring" in that piece. Now we just need the smoke.

An ESPN article reminds us that Cuonzo Martin isn't the only guy on campus to have beaten cancer.

Etceteras . . . Don't sleep on Gregory Clark. . . . Prentiss Waggner's red jersey didn't slow him down this spring. . . . Former Alabama defensive lineman Darrington Sentimore didn't dominate immediately this spring as many had hoped, but there is still time. . . . Dooley acknowledges some grade troubles from the fall semester, but says that they've wrestled control of it in the spring. The winter honor roll, though, includes no footballers.

Tennessee Football video playlist for 4.23.12.

As Incipient_Senescence suggested in RTT's Orange and White Game recap, you have to be cautious about what you conclude from the spring game. That said, we're all hoping that there's truly something to the seemingly improved running game. After all, rushing the football was the thing we did worst in 2011, and that was just the last in a long line of inadequate-to-downright-awful rushing seasons and the generally downward trend that started it.

So go ahead and take some solace in the results of Saturday's game. The unit that averaged 2.7 yards per carry last fall averaged 5.6 on Saturday. Marlin Lane put up 106 yards and two TDs on only nine carries (and had 226 all-purpose yards). Rajion Neal had 10 for 49 and a TD, Devrin Young had 8 for 42, and Tom Smith had 10 for 49. That's 168 rushing yards for one team and 83 for the other, and the fact that all of the backs looked pretty good seems to indicate that the offensive line had a great deal to do with the scrimmage success. Derek Dooley, by the way, says that Lane's Orange and White Game performance didn't lock up the starting gig for him. The competition for that will continue in the fall and will include incoming RB Davante Bourque. Let's hope the success does as well.

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	April 21, 2012 2:00 PM EDT TV: FSN South (delayed) Internet TV: ESPN (subject to blackout) and FoxSportsTennessee.com
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Jackson the Mule says . . .

. . . Go Vols. Beat the Vols!

Leave your pre-, in-, and post-game thoughts below.

You can apparently watch here.

(If that video isn't working for you, you can find it here.)

Lady Vols icon exiting with dignity and class ... and at the right time - CBSSports
Meantime, I'll be thinking of Coach Summitt, too, and what I'll always take away from this announcement is how she handled the situation -- this incredibly unfortunate situation -- the same way she handled everything, i.e., with dignity and class. She's not going to hang on too long like legends tend to do. She's walking away at the right moment and before anybody has a chance to whisper (or yell) that it's time, and now I hope she'll be able to spend the rest of her life cherishing and remembering all the people she's impacted and things she's accomplished for as long as humanly and medically possible.

Pat Summitt's final season both heartbreaking and awe-inspiring - Ann Killion - SI.com
Summitt was honored as SI's Sportswoman of the Year in December and in Denver at the Final Four. She is stepping down just weeks before the 40th anniversary of Title IX. She reshaped the athletic hierarchy, becoming the winningest coach -- male or female -- in history. She put an early face on women's athletics, women's strength and determination. And she put a face on something more this year. Her legacy was already as rich and deep as any in sport. In the past eight months, she has added a deeper, human layer. Pat Summitt has showed us how to win. How to lose. And how to fight.

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Well, I certainly screwed this up. It's what, nearly three weeks after the National Championship? Whoops. Anyway, congratulations to MississipVOL for winning the 2012 RTT Bracket Challenge. He or she squeaked out a one point win over Onebadtke. High fives.

Because we're keeping track of these things, the pythag bracket finished 16th, giving it a four-year resume of 2nd, 3rd, 58th, and 16th. This year's comes with a bit of an asterisk, because if Ohio State would have held on against Kansas in the Final Four instead of giving up a lead and losing by two, it would have finished 2nd, assuming the Buckeyes would also have lost to Kentucky.

Full standings after the jump.

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As you may know, there are a couple of new rules for kickoffs this season, including that teams will be kicking off from the 35 yard line instead of the 30 and that players can only use five yards instead of 10 to get a running head start. How are teams going to react? Will they use the extra yardage to maximize the opportunity for safe touchbacks or will they roll the dice and try to turn it into an advantage by kicking to the corner and hoping to hold the returner to something less than the standard touchback start? Who knows?

But the Vols (and everyone else, surely) are thinking about it:

"I think the people who are smart are looking at it now," Coiner said. "Because yeah, everything if it has changed, it has changed something. You can't just say 'OK, we took a 10-yard start last year and now we'll just take a 5.' No. You've got to go back and look, how does that affect you. Every single rule change we have gone through once again, to coach Dooley's credit, we have examined it with a fine-tooth comb. How does that affect us? Hows does that affect them? How's that rule change on kickoff return going to affect our kickoff return? So I would say that yeah, the cat-and-mouse game has already started if you're smart. Because you're already designing what you're going to do based on the rule changes."

And whatever they're asking him to do, kicker Michael Palardy is apparently doing it, at least on kickoffs:

"He missed one, [but] guys, he's making a lot progress," Dooley said Saturday. "He's been money on kickoffs. He looks like a different guy out there, and it wasn't just moving him up five [yards]. "He's got a real confident approach, [and] he adjusted some things. The biggest thing we're ironing out on our field goals is that we've got a new snapper and a new holder, so there are a lot of nuances that can affect a kick. But he's having a good spring."

In other football stuff, John Adams isn't really buying that Tennessee will be much of a running team this fall. Three of UT's early enrollees have had rough starts to their Vol careers. Was Dooley's drama queen comment yesterday directed at Justin Hunter? And did Devrin Young run right through Tiny Richardson's giant tree trunk legs?

Link dumpage after the jump.

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The Vols had their second scrimmage this weekend, and you can see all of the pertinent stats here. The guys with the best performances? Brian Randolph, who's becoming a leader even as a sophomore (5 tackles and another interception to match his first in the first scrimmage), and Justin Hunter (3 catches for 70 yards including a great, field-stretching, tone-setting 50-yard TD), and Marlin Lane (12 carries for 71 yards and a TD). Rajion Neal (12 for 39) and Devrin Young (7 for 35) also did well, and if you see Ben Bartholomew coming, you'd better take Prentiss Waggner's advice and get out of the bull's way.

Derek Dooley, as usual, was both pleased and displeased. He's happy with the effort and the toughness, but that's not keeping him from harping on the mentals:

"The biggest thing that is kind of holding us back right now is, No. 1, our level of discipline on the simple things," Dooley said. "Discipline on the simple things, lot of penalties, we made too many mistakes that are really simple things. The second one is our attitude just when the flow of the game begins to happen and how we get affected by things that shouldn’t affect us — whether it’s a big play or (a guy) is tired or didn’t get a call or maybe one guy is jawing a little bit. Those are the things right now that are anchoring us that we’ve got really to work on."

He's obviously concerned about some of the Bad Things that happened in last year's second halves and is doing what he can to make sure those Bad Things trade jerseys:

"This sport is about who is going to break whose will," Dooley said. "It is a physically, mentally and emotionally draining 60 minutes. At some point either you are going to break his will or he breaks your will. That is what it is. We got our will broken a little too much last year and you saw it in the second half. That is our number one thing this year. We have to toughen up. We don't make excuses. We have to get it done."

But wait, there's more on the mind over matter front!

"I told the team the other day life wouldn't be so difficult if you didn't expect it to be so easy," Dooley said. "So when you get hit and it hurts, you shouldn't be surprised. You should expect it to hurt. You get up and you go play again. We're getting better at that."

* * * *

"The trainers know who is a drama queen," Dooley said. "And sometimes, you've got to pull guys out. Brent Brewer — I think he has forgotten he has had a (knee injury). He's out there flying around, diving.

"But some guys, when they get hit, they have to have this big seance to let the whole stadium know: 'Look at me. I'm in pain.' That's what we've got to get rid of."

More links after the jump.

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YEAH, LET'S DO THAT. I'm sorry to bring this up, but do you remember how many times over the past several seasons an opponent's receiver had a career day against Tennessee's defense? Alabama's D.J. Hall comes immediately to mind, but we all know there were others as well. Just last year, we had one particular defensive back who, bless his heart, . . . had problems.

Well, I have no idea how the DBs have been coached recently, but I don't recall any news reports of an emphasis on jamming the wide receivers so they can't just go unimpeded wherever they like. So I like what I'm hearing from new cornerbacks coach Derrick Ansley:

"We want to get up and deny the ball," Ansley said. "The thing about it is, you can't let fast receivers run down the field without being jammed, so we're going to get up there and try to challenge as many receivers as we can. We've got guys that are very strong-handed, heavy-handed who can jam. We've got a lot of length back there. I think we should have a really good year jamming people.

And this:

"The main thing is leverage -- pad level and using the hands," new cornerbacks coach Derrick Ansley said last week. "That's one of the things that, to be a good DB, you've got to be able to get your hands on people. I've said this 100 times, 'You can't let fast guys run down the field.'

"We've got to get up there and challenge guys at the line of scrimmage with bump-and-run and press-man techniques. That's the biggest thing. We're just trying to teach them to use their hands."

Yeah. I propose amending the maxims to include, "Don't let the opponent's offense do what they want." Who's with me?

YOU'LL FAIL. Don't even bother to resist making the obvious joke about John Palermo, who recently spent 15 years at Wisconsin, having trouble keeping up with the pace in the SEC:

"I'd say I'm definitely old school," he said last week. "They're killing me right now. Look at me. They're wearing me out.

"You know what, I don't know that it's more than I expected, but I've got to tell you this: the tempo here, in my 38 years of coaching, is about twice as fast as it's been at any place I've ever coached."

Seriously, though, you have to love hearing that. And no, I don't really care whether it's the first entry in "Things New Coaches Should Say to Endear Themselves to Fans."

WHO'S HOT? Rucker has a list of Five Guys on the Rise (which, if they were on the ball, would have been sponsored by Five Guys Burgers and Fries) midway through spring. The list: Stephen Fowlkes, Byron Moore, Rajion Neal, Antonio "Tiny" Richardson, and Trent Taylor.

REALLY. In other news, Tennessee's kickers are practicing kicking. Actually, they're also practicing catching footballs from JUGS machines and taking steps and stuff.

REALLY? John Adams is bored again, and now he's concerned that Tennessee's move to the 3-4 could win the state the national championship in obesity. Don't worry, John's doing his part to balance it all out.

BUT IS THERE VIDEO OF CUONZO MARTIN RAPPING? The Volscars were last night, and here's the list of winners.

More links after the jump.

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