KNOXVILLE—Thirty minutes before tipoff Thursday night in Thompson-Boling Arena, the place was completely packed. And we’re just talking about the press room.

My, how times continue to change in Tennessee. Two and a half years into his Volunteer tenure, coach Bruce Pearl has turned the renovated arena on the Tennessee River’s banks into a ticket as cherished as a football Saturday.

ESPN cameras were in the house for the No. 6 Vols’ 80-60 win over No. 16 Vanderbilt. And it’s entirely possible the state’s best team is six hours or so to the west, since Memphis is ranked No. 2.

It’s a story we ran in last Thursday’s Herald Courier, but it bears repeating: the state of Tennessee’s emergence on the college basketball scene is arguably the sport’s top story at midseason.

Forget Bob Knight’s 900th win, forget that the Pacific 10 Conference might actually be the nation’s best at the midseason point, forget there are still three unbeaten teams.

Just know that there are three Tennessee schools in the top 16 teams in the nation. And the state could easily have as many as six teams in the NCAA Tournament field in March if Austin Peay, Chattanooga and one of the A-Sun teams (ETSU, Belmont, Lipscomb) win their conference tournaments.

The buzz down here before tipoff is such that you’d almost swear Phillip Fulmer and Smokey are about to run through the T. But it’s a different era in Tennessee, one where men’s basketball is no longer a diversion to fill time until spring practice.

Sure, there have been other good teams here at UT. The Jerry Green teams I covered in the late 90s and early part of this decade oozed talent, if not always results. And no one can forget the Ernie & Bernie Show orchestrated by coach Ray Mears in the mid-70s.

But Pearl has changed a culture in a remarkably short time span. And the fact that ESPN has made this its lead game tonight—complete with its magazine’s top college hoops writer, Andy Katz, on the scene—is yet another example of why Tennessee college hoops is a big deal across the continental 48.