Tennessee Basketball: Bruce Pearl's Vols Look to Exact Revenge on USC

It's not football.

A fact that many Tennessee basketball fans may need to be reminded of before this evening's contest with the Trojans of Southern California.

In the past 10 years, if USC were to visit the Volunteers in any sport you would likely see a matchup of two proud schools with mutual respect for the quality of each other's athletic departments. A heated contest predicated on admiration and competition rather than bad blood and spite.

Those feelings went right out the window about twelve months ago do to the saga that is often simply referred to as "Kiffin-gate" due to the all-too-often used process of referencing the "Watergate" scandal and directly relating it to every remotely scandalous proceeding in the world of sports. Cliches aside, Kiffin and scandal are certainly synonymous and Vol Nation has taken exception to Lane's actions.

Many people in Knoxville harbor such a distaste for all things relating to Lane Kiffin that they have simply transformed him into a real life version of Lord Voldemort and simply refuse to even mention his name.

For those of you who may have been unconscious over the last year and missed out, Lane Kiffin was the head coach at the University of Tennessee for about 12 minutes before bolting across the country to the sunshine and smog that is Los Angeles (sorry SoCal, but us bitter Vol fans gotta get in our digs.)

Nobody ever accused collegiate sports fans in the South of being reasonable and there likely would have been a hatred of Kiffin on Rocky Top even if he had left amicably, but he didn't.

Kiffin took several staff members with him to USC and even encouraged early enrollees at UT not to go to class so that they could spurn the Vols and head west with Kiffin and company, leaving many in Knoxville upset and alienated praying for the day the two squads could meet on the gridiron and exact their revenge.

Whether or not that matchup ever happens is between USC athletic director Pat Haden and UT athletic director Mike Hamilton. In the meantime, Vol fans will settle for a matchup on the hardwood tonight in Thompson-Boling Arena.

It's not football.

However, it won't exactly be a completely Lane Kiffin driven spite-fest tonight in Knoxville for the Trojans. The story happens to come a little bit more full circle than that.

It turns out that Kiffin isn't the only USC leading man that has burned bridges in Knoxville. Southern Cal basketball head coach Kevin O'Neill has a history all his own at the University of Tennessee.

O'Neill was the head man for the basketVols from 1994-1997 and really brought Tennessee out of the stone ages in terms of their basketball program. The Vols made significant strides under O'Neill, but a disagreement between O'Neill and former Tennessee AD Doug Dickey drove O'Neill to accept a job at Northwestern.

O'Neill got in a few parting shots as he left and then proceeded to watch from Evanston as Jerry Green coached the talent he had accumulated to four consecutive NCAA tournament berths.

Seldom do you see such symmetry in the chaotic world that is college sports, and you can bet that Tennessee fans will have an eye on this one. O'Neill knows that the people of Knoxville don't harbor near as much resentment towards him as they do to Kiffin, UT's favorite pariah, and even joked as much in an interview with Baxter Holmes of the Los Angeles Times.

"Well, I think they'll be able to separate me from Lane," O'Neill said.

Which is true, but don't think UT fans don't want this one as some measure of revenge regardless.  

It's not football, but for now it will have to do.