The Game

For many years, there was no publicly available copy of this game. There’s an amazing YouTube account titled Vintage Orange that has uploaded nearly every Pearl-era televised basketball game; even he didn’t have this one. It was hard to find people who remembered this game even happening, simply because it wasn’t well-attended and the game was played on FOX Sports South (RIP) at 7 PM on a November Tuesday when most people probably had other things to do.

Synergy Sports, where I download every video you see on this website from, was no help, either. So I took a shot in the dark:

21 hours later, by way of the Tennessee Sports and Information Department:

You can post your way to anything in this world, I suppose. So: a special thanks to Tom Satkowiak and the team at Tennessee for sending this game video over. As far as I know, it is the only available copy of the game you will find on the internet, and I’m excited to share a bunch of clips from it.

Oh yeah, the game, sorry. Tennessee actually misses their first shot in this game, which is funny because everyone knows what happens next. 42 seconds in, Scotty Hopson hits a three:

And the rout is already on. Tennessee bursts out of the gates on a 20-0 run. Asheville is down by double digits 2:48 into the game and never cracks the single-digit mark again. How many basketball games can you say you’ve seen where one team spends 37+ of 40 available minutes up by 10 or more points? That’s why this is a strangely special one.

For the morbidly curious, here’s Asheville’s first nine possessions: Turnover, missed two-pointer, turnover, turnover, turnover, turnover, turnover, missed layup, turnover. The saddest of these is an inbounds TO with 17:14 left in 1H where the inbounder just leads his dude straight into the first row.

With 14:53 left in the first half, Asheville finally scores on a free throw. You can get used to that. In fact, Asheville’s only points in the first 16:30 of this game come from eight free throws. Asheville misses their first NINETEEN field goal attempts in this game. It’s not for a lack of trying, either. They get three field goal attempts from 10:33-10:22…and miss them all.

It doesn’t seem like Bruce Pearl was exactly expecting this level of destruction. He spends most of this game relatively calm on the sidelines. “Will, his team won by 75 points,” you say. “Of course he’d be calm!” To which I say: I once saw Bruce Pearl rip his suit jacket off in frustration when his team was beating South Carolina by double digits.

To be fair to Bruce, Asheville probably didn’t expect this, either. The previous season, they’d finished 15-16, but 10-8 in the Big South. That was good enough to be the fourth-best team, though admittedly, this made them merely the 263rd-best team in college basketball, per KenPom. Still, no one expects to start a game down 20-0, much less a mid-pack team in a moderately respected mid-major conference.

20-0 turns into 25-1. That turns into 49-6 over the course of nine minutes, meaning that, with 5:44 to play in the first half, Tennessee is beating their opponent by 43 points. A Division I opponent that had a winning record in their conference last year.

This is an amazing game to say “what’s your favorite ridiculous score?” Because I could see arguments for 25-1, 49-6, 61-10, 82-21, 101-31, or even 124-41. But I think the pure shock value of 49-6 is the winner. 25-1 is hilarious, yes, but it’s at least reasonably plausible under specific circumstances. 82-21, 101-31, and 124-41 are all scores that have happened before, too, in all likelihood. Those are just the scores when the UConn women play Boston University. 61-10 came close, too.

But 49-6 is the one that would make me say “what the hell?” the most. Like, think about watching ESPN that night and seeing the BottomLine scroll that says 49-6 with 5:44 left in the first half. Wouldn’t you think there’s a typo?

Anyway, there are two final sad trombones left in this half. One is when UNC Asheville finally makes their first field goal attempt. That happens with 3:10 left in the first half of a basketball game.

The second is when Tennessee finally commits their first turnover, which is with about 4:15 left in the half. That’s notable because it means Asheville turned the ball over 13 times before Tennessee committed even one. I’ve been watching basketball for 20 years and genuinely cannot recall another example where one team was in the double digits of turnovers before the other gave it away even once.

The first half mercifully, blissfully comes to an end for Asheville. They look mentally and physically exhausted. They trail Tennessee, 66-14.

I haven’t posted a ton of game-by-game statistics in this series so far; I want to break that pattern for this game in particular. I think you’ll see why.

First Half Stats, Tennessee/UNC Asheville

• 39 possessions
• Tennessee 1.69 points per possession; UNC Asheville 0.359 PPP
• Tennessee 75.7% eFG% (16-24 2PT, 8-13 3PT); UNC Asheville 7.7% eFG% (2-18 2PT, 0-8 3PT)
• Tennessee 7 offensive rebounds (50% OREB%); UNC Asheville 9 (37.5% OREB%)
• Tennessee 4 turnovers (10.2% TO%); UNC Asheville 16 (41% TO%)

To this day, I have never seen Tennessee put up a single-half demolition of another team like they did on this day. I don’t know what my favorite stat is, either. A 1.69 PPP in any half of basketball is a massive accomplishment, but it feels like the third-wildest thing here. UNC Asheville posting a 7.7% eFG% is unbelievable; so is the 41% turnover percentage, meaning two out of every five times they took the ball down the court, Tennessee took it out of their hands before they could miss a shot.

If you think about it that way, perhaps Tennessee was doing Asheville a favor by pressing and forcing all of these turnovers. More misses would’ve made Asheville even more sad. It might’ve been best to commit all those turnovers, lest they miss more shots.

There is a second half of this game. As one would expect from a game where one team leads the other by 52 points at halftime, it is mostly unnotable. I mean, what more is there to say? There is no magic comeback. There is no sudden shooting spurt by Asheville. Tennessee opens with an 26-10 run, extends the lead to 92-24, and starts playing all sorts of goofy lineups late in the game.

The funniest and most memorable pre-goofy lineup thing that happens is this ridiculous Bobby Maze steal -> J.P. Prince dunk that I can’t believe I forgot about.

Tennessee breaks 100 with 8:21 to play in the game. The Vols have broken 100 25 times in my lifetime thus far, but the number of games where you cross triple digits and there’s still 20% of the game left to go is pretty slim. Multiple times, Tennessee breaches an 80-point lead. It first happens with a Renaldo Woolridge three at 5:51. It stays around 78-80 points for four more minutes.

Then, with 1:36 left, Michael Hubert hits a three – he would go 3-for-3 this season from deep – to make it 124-41, Tennessee.

If that margin holds, it would have been the sixth-largest win by one Division I team over another in college basketball history. It would have also been the third-largest win by a Top 25 team over an opponent. Prior to a pair of instances in 2019 and 2020, there had been no 80+ point wins over Division I teams since 1996. Tennessee was on their way to a genuinely historic victory.

Something very unfortunate happens for historic purposes: for the first time in the entire game, UNC Asheville goes on an 8-0 run and cuts the deficit to 75. The real kicker is that, with five seconds left, Woolridge turns it over, after which Asheville’s Jaron Lane streaks down the court to turn the score from 124-47 to 124-49 with a second left.

No one mentions this at the time, but somehow, a 75-point demolition could have been even worse. Essentially, Tennessee was 90 seconds away from what would have held as the largest post-1989 victory by a ranked team over a Division I opponent. I guess we’ll just have to settle for, you know, a 75-point demolition.

NEXT PAGE: Reelin’ in the years