Strange: Vols felt a draft during '06-07, thanks to Pearl

Besides being a fun ride in its own right, Tennessee basketball last winter served an ancillary purpose.

If you watched the Vols, you also watched the lottery portion of the NBA draft take shape.

Somehow, UT coach Bruce Pearl failed to get Yi Jianlian on the 2006-07 schedule. Guess he was ducking the Guangdong Tigers, but that was about his only oversight.

Monitoring the draft Thursday night, UT fans didn’t need one of ESPN’s talking head to break down Greg Oden’s game. Or Kevin Durant’s. Or Brandan Wright’s, etc.

Historically, Tennessee has faced as many as seven first-round picks in the preceding season, as many as three top-10 picks.

But this was unprecedented.

The top four picks and seven of the first nine came straight off UT’s 2006-07 schedule.

It was no accident.

“You’re sending your players a message,’’ Pearl said Thursday, “with how you play, running, pressing, being up-tempo. That’s usually reserved for more talented teams.

“The second thing, if you don’t schedule those teams, it sends your players the message you don’t think you can beat them.

“We realize we coulda, shoulda beaten Ohio State twice, we did beat Florida at our place, we beat Texas and we outplayed North Carolina for a half.’’

With NBA scouts courtside every dribble of the way.

This is the fifth consecutive year no UT player was selected, but the files are started on a number of Vols. Barring serious injury, Chris Lofton will end the draft drought next year.

Oden is the third No. 1 pick to have played the Vols en route to the draft. UT brawled with Shaquille O’Neal in the 1992 SEC tournament and opened the 1965-66 season against Michigan and Cazzie Russell.

They got a double dose of Oden. His 24 points and 15 rebounds were instrumental in the Buckeyes’ 68-66 win in January. In the Sweet 16, he didn’t do a lot other than reject Ramar Smith’s length-of-the-court drive, UT’s final shot of the season it turned out.

Durant tagged the Vols with 26 points and 14 boards when Texas visited in December. He even sent the game into overtime with a clutch bucket. His only misstep was assuming Lofton wouldn’t shoot (and hit) from 35 feet.

If the No. 1 pick hinged on box scores against the Vols, North Carolina’s Wright would have gone first. He was 9-of-10 from the field and had eight boards in the 101-87 Tar Heel romp in Madison Square Garden.

As for the Gators, it turns out Dick Vitale’s insider radio tip was right. Al Horford, not Joakim Noah, was the first to go.

Let’s hear it for the TSSAA. Wright (Brentwood), Corey Brewer (Portland) and Thaddeus Young (Memphis) went in the first 12 picks.

Derrick Byars (Memphis) went 42nd.

Of the eight freshmen who stayed in the draft, all went in the top 21. That even includes one (Daequan Cook of Ohio State) who didn’t start.

Clearly, Ohio State benefited from having Oden, Mike Conley Jr. and Cook for a year. And even though Texas didn’t make it past the second round of the NCAA tournament, the Longhorns got a lot of mileage out of Durant, the national player of the year.

But I wonder about the others.

North Carolina went 31-7 and barely missed the Final Four. But the Tar Heels were so loaded they might have achieved that even without Wright.

Washington won a fierce recruiting war for homegrown 7-footer Spencer Hawes but what do the Huskies have to show for it? They went 8-10 in the Pac-10 and didn’t make the Big Dance. Hawes was honorable mention All-Pac 10, which will forever be his high-water mark on campus. Now he’s a Sacramento King.

That goes double for Georgia Tech. The Jackets finished 8-8 in the ACC and went out in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Not much of a legacy for prize recruits Young and Javaris Crittenton in their one college season.

Is the recruiting ordeal even worth it? Yes, says Pearl.

“If they’re not lottery picks (Young was), they made a bad decision,’’ Pearl said. “But Georgia Tech didn’t make a bad decision recruiting either one of them.

“Let’s us have a problem next year with one of our guys going after one year. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem to have?’’