The wise elderly gentleman sat silently near courtside, a Tennessee's men's basketball practice unfolding before him in an almost-empty Thompson-Boling Arena.

This has been a daily routine for Jim McCoin, 74, ever since the late 1970s when the Tennessee alumnus moved back to Knoxville after retiring from the Army and becoming a professor at a local community college.

He has seen good practices from bad teams and bad practices from good teams. He has witnessed little players with big hearts and big players with no hearts. He has observed all kinds of coaching styles, from deliberate Don DeVoe, sometimes X-rated Kevin O'Neill to nice guy Buzz Peterson.

But the soft-spoken McCoin hasn't seen anyone like first-year Vols coach Bruce Pearl.

"I'm not a coach or a sportswriter, and I don't pretend to be," an apologetic McCoin said. "But I've never seen a coach who teaches like Coach Pearl. Not only does he tell a player to do something, he explains why they are doing it. He wants them to understand, it and you can see they appreciate that. His coaching makes more common sense than any coach we've had here through the years."

Pearl's players, off to an 11-2 start overall and 2-1 in the Southeastern Conference heading into their last nonconference game of the regular season at No. 5 Memphis on Wednesday, feel the same way. So do the Vols' fans. They've shown their love for Pearl's uptempo, relentless style of play by averaging 15,569 in the first eight home games, including 21,612 at Wednesday's Southeastern Conference opener against Georgia.

"We've got a long way to go, but here's a couple of questions for you," said Pearl, turning from interviewee to interviewer. "What's more surprising, our record or the fact we had 21,000 in here the other night? And who's done a better job -- our players, our coaches or our fans?

"I think that's debatable. What's going on is it's not one entity. What's making it so much fun is that we're all doing this thing together."

Coaching graveyard

In college basketball coaching circles, the Tennessee men's basketball job has been viewed as a Big Orange graveyard. Ever since the mid-70s when Vols coach Ray Mears and all-Americans Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld rode off in the sunset in their old-school bun-hugging shorts, the men's program has been more miss than hit.

The last five Tennessee coaches, spanning 1978-79 through last season -- DeVoe, Wade Houston, O'Neill, Jerry Green and Peterson -- combined for eight NCAA Tournament wins (five by DeVoe, three by Green), one SEC Tournament title (1979 under DeVoe) and shared two regular-season league championships.

Combine that with the perennial success of the football program and the six-time national champion Lady Vols basketball team, and Tennessee's men's basketball had become the underachievers of the UT athletic family.

Every year if the men's team doesn't look promising by the time conference play starts in early January, the attention of Vols' fans turns to football recruiting, or whether they can start booking hotel rooms for the women's Final Four. Men's basketball eventually becomes a "how long before we get another new coach?" proposition.

"That attitude is not acceptable to me," said third-year Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton. "We had 19 of our 20 sports playing in the postseason last year and 18 of 20 ranked in the top 25. We have the resources here to win."

But it seems the Vols never had the right coaching formula. Either the playing style of the Vols was too deliberate or too out-of-control. Some coaches, like O'Neill, were strong recruiters. Other coaches, with little or no previous head coaching experience, never quite figured out a consistent on-court philosophy.

When Hamilton made the decision to fire Peterson, he found Pearl, 45, a hidden gem with 27 seasons on the sidelines. His first 14 seasons were as an assistant for Dr. Tom Davis at Boston College, Stanford and Iowa. His last 13 seasons were as a head coach at Division 2 Southern Indiana for nine years where he won the '95 national championship, then the last four years at Division 1 University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin, where he was in the NCAA tourney twice, including last year's team that advanced to the Sweet 16.

From afar, Hamilton loved Pearl's track record of success: 12 20-win seasons, and his 13 years head coaching experience, which was almost as much as the three previous Tennessee coaches combined when they were hired by UT. Once Hamilton met Pearl face-to-face, he knew he'd found his man.

"I felt I had a connection with Bruce," Hamilton said. "I felt that with Bruce's charisma and infectious personality, the way he related to our team and fans, that there would be an upswing in our program.

"Bruce has a maturity that comes with his experience. He has a plan how he'll handle his players, how he'll handle discipline, how he handles media, how he handles speaking requests. He has been around the block."

Pearl didn't have to do much homework on the Vols' coaching vacancy. He knew the negatives and embraced them.

"They had a history of coaching changes -- guys have won and got fired, and guys have lost and got fired," Pearl said. "There's not a local recruiting talent base. And everyone said the building (24,535-seat Thompson-Boling Arena) is too big.

"But with the way the Lady Vols have played, you know the interest is here. There's a passion. We've got to give fans something to be interested about. I've spent my whole life coaching in gyms that were too small. I'm finally in one that's too big. It's a nice problem to have."

He can talk, but can he coach?

There's no doubt that Pearl, a Boston native (and naturally a raving Red Sox fan) knows how to sell a product. In his first six months on the job, the Boston College Class of 1982 graduate had more than 200 speaking engagements. He and his staff, including veteran recruiter Scott Edgar, who's best known for tapping into talent-rich Memphis for then-Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson in the late 1980s, have a '06 recruiting class ranked among the nation's top 10.

Even tireless Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt said that "you sometimes have to talk to him (Pearl) on the move."

Pearl got high marks from two of the best players in Tennessee history, Dale Ellis and Grunfeld, the latter who calls Pearl "a basketball junkie."

Media are drawn to him, as if he's the Dale Brown of the new millennium, someone like the former LSU coach who can fill a reporter's notepad and tape recorder.

But the people a coach can't fool are his players. They know right away if he can help them win, if he can make them better, and the Vols quickly discovered the new guy had coaching chops.

"I don't think there was ever a problem of us buying in to what Coach Pearl wanted," said Vols junior and former White Station High star Dane Bradshaw, whose gritty play as one of the shortest starting power forwards (6-4) in Division 1 makes him the poster boy for Pearl's relentless attacking style of play. "He had a background of winning at every level and he beat an SEC team (fifth-seeded Alabama) in the NCAA Tournament last year. His coaches feel strongly about their stuff, you have no choice but to love it."

Knowing that his team has just four scholarship players taller than 6-5, Pearl began preparing his team for his full speed ahead style with brutal preseason conditioning. The Vols stopped working out in the Thompson-Boling weight room and began lifting with the football players at their weight room.

And there were the running workouts, including never-ending sprints up the steep hill that leads from street level at Neyland Stadium down to the visitors' locker room area.

"You know Gate 10, you know that hill?" said Vols guard Chris Lofton, who tops the SEC in three-pointers made per game. "We started running that thing 10 times straight, and after about six times our legs were gone. But then, we got to running it 20 times, and it's really paying off now. We don't get tired."

In the SEC opener at South Carolina, the Vols trailed by 15 in the second half before kicking it in gear, hitting 10-of-13 threes in a 76-69 victory. A few days later against Georgia, the Vols led the Bulldogs by four midway through the second half before disruptive, pressing defense sent Georgia into a series of bad shots and turnovers, leading to an 89-76 UT victory.

Even in the 88-74 loss at LSU on Saturday against a considerably taller and more physical Tiger team, the Vols never backed off the accelerator. Win or lose, it's the way they play, and it's much appreciated by Tennessee fans starving for a hard-nosed style.

The Vols lead the SEC in six statistical categories, ranging from scoring average to steals to assists to turnover ratio.

"Many times, I've heard people say, 'Even if y'all lose, I'm going to keep coming out and watch y'all because I love the way y'all play with heart and passion," Bradshaw said. "Coach still feels we can play harder, and fans are buying into our fast tempo. We've got to continue to keep people happy, and wins can always do that."

Bradshaw and his teammates are so taken aback by the sudden fan support -- "Students actually show up early before the game to get good seats and heckle the other team,'' he said -- that it has been overwhelming. Vols center Major Wingate was in Pearl's office Thursday morning, raving that "more people came up to me this morning in two hours and told me 'good game' than in the last two years."

Staying on the 'up' elevator

Pearl even admits he's a bit surprised at his team's start, which includes a 17-point win at No. 6 Texas in which the Vols hit 12-of-24 threes and made 25-of-28 free throws.

"This has been the fastest transition to this point in the first year of any programs I've been in," Pearl said. "We've done everything and a little more than what I expected.

"But we've got to keep everything in perspective. We beat Texas when they were missing a starter. Beating South Carolina and Georgia, it was like we held serve. But games like LSU, Memphis and (No. 2) Florida (on Saturday) in Knoxville are opportunity games. They don't come along very often."

Tennessee senior point guard C.J. Watson, the SEC's fourth-leading scorer at 16.8 points and the league's top free throw shooter, said the fast start has been nice. But it won't get the Vols anywhere in March at tournament time unless they stay hungry.

"In this league, you can win three in a row or lose three in a row at any time," Watson said. "We're trying to stay confident and humble at the same time. We're still trying to get respect from everybody."

They've got it at home. And that's a huge start.

-- Ron Higgins: 529-2525