Ryan Callahan

New Heritage High School football coach Brint Russell now can turn his attention to his first spring practices with the Mountaineers.

Everything else finally is in place.

Russell and his new staff, which is finalized but has not been announced, have decided on the offensive and defensive systems Heritage will run this year.

On offense, the Mountaineers will work primarily out of a two-back, shotgun set. The defense will be based out of a 3-4 system but will feature the flexibility to switch to 4-3 and 5-2 looks.

The schemes on both sides of the ball satisfy Russell’s desire to have versatile playbooks.

Russell seemed particularly pleased with the offense he plans to begin installing May 4, when Heritage opens two weeks of spring practices that will run through May 15.

“If anything, I could say it’s probably running the ‘I’ from the shotgun,” Russell said of the new offensive system. “It’s that type of an offense. It just gives us a better chance of throwing the football, which we’re wanting to do a little more. It suits what we’ve got real well.”

He described the defense, which was brought in by his yet-to-be-announced defensive coordinator, as a multiple, odd-man-front system.

“It’s going to give us the ability to hop into a 4-3 or a 5-2 or what have you,” Russell said. “We want to be multiple, and a 3-4 gives that opportunity. (The new defensive coordinator) sold me on it, and I like it, so we’re going to implement it.”

Russell said roughly 75 to 80 players have been lifting weights and plan to participate in spring practice with the Mountaineers, which would represent a significant boost in Heritage’s roster size compared to recent years.

“Everything’s going great,” he said. “Lots of kids out, a lot of excitement. We’re just moving right along.”

The offseason conditioning program has been just as encouraging.

“The holdovers from last year are working extremely hard,” Russell said. “Our kids have gotten a lot stronger in the weight room. We’ve got seven, eight kids who can bench-press 300 pounds now. We’re getting strong and getting faster every day, working to get better.”

The Mountaineers will hold spring workouts Monday through Friday for the first two weeks of May. They will play scrimmages against Cumberland County on May 8 and Cocke County on May 15, both at Jack Renfro Stadium.

Russell said athletic director Chip Fuller will announce Heritage’s complete new staff “sometime here in the next couple of weeks.”

The guy catching passes and wearing a blank orange jersey for the Tennessee football team isn’t a newcomer waiting to be assigned a jersey number.

He’s not a walk-on, either.

That’s just Brandon Warren, the former Class 2A Mr. Football at Alcoa High School.

So why is the Volunteers’ tight end-turned-wide receiver, who has turned a few heads this spring in his first work as a wideout since high school, no longer donning his usual No. 1 jersey?

The way Warren explains it, it’s a motivational tactic.

“I need to get my swag back,” he said Tuesday. “I’m going with the blank jersey until I feel like I’m back to No. 1. We kind of sat down, me and (receivers) Coach (Frank) Wilson and Coach Kiffin. I went to them about it, because there’s just some things I need to work on. When I work them out and feel comfortable, Coach (Kiffin) said he’ll make sure I get my number back.”

Warren spoke to reporters after finding himself as the target of several fade passes during UT’s red-zone work Tuesday in the team’s first practice after a 10-day layoff for spring break.

He addressed why he approached new coach Lane Kiffin earlier in the offseason about moving to wide receiver, a position that seems to suit him well based on his size.

At 6 feet 2 inches and 216 pounds, he was a bit undersized at tight end. He could translate, however, into a big wide receiver with adequate speed.

“I knew from watching (Southern Cal) film that (Kiffin) liked big receivers. … I can play tight end, but I felt like I could be a better wide receiver in this offense than I would a tight end,” Warren said. “It’s easier to cut weight than put on for me.”

Junior receiver Gerald Jones is among the teammates who have raved about Warren’s progress. He already has high hopes for Warren.

Once he gets his number back, that is.

“He’s a big receiver who can move, and he’s shifty,” Jones said of Warren. “We use him in a lot of ways. He runs pretty good routes. … He’s going to be a big part of this offense.”

KNOXVILLE — Fans seemed to pass along the same words of encouragement to Tennessee men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl everywhere he went after his team ended last season with a loss to Louisville in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16.

“Well, don’t worry about it, Coach,” they told Pearl, as he recalled earlier this week. “We’ll do better than the Sweet 16 next year.”

That didn’t really make Pearl feel any better at the time. He knew the reality of the situation.

This year, those widespread, high expectations helped him appreciate even more that the Volunteers (21-12) were able to make the NCAA tournament again without Chris Lofton and JaJuan Smith, the team’s two leading scorers from a year ago.

Those optimistic fans also made Pearl realize that the unprecedented postseason runs of the past three years — when UT went to the second round of the NCAA tournament in 2006 and the Sweet 16 in 2007 and 2008 — probably have been taken for granted.

“This year, for the first time, I think the expectations were too high,” Pearl said.

Even with newcomers Scotty Hopson and Bobby Maze penciled into the starting lineup and at least two other freshmen being counted on as regular contributors, the Vols were picked as the preseason favorites to repeat their first SEC regular-season title in 41 years.

They won the SEC East but watched LSU run away with the overall league title. UT then made a run at its first conference tournament championship in 30 years before falling to Mississippi State, 64-61, in Sunday’s title game.

Pearl said his team, which felt slighted by its No. 9 seed for the NCAA tournament’s East Region, was fortunate to accomplish what it did this season. Plenty of other good teams, he explained, were left at home for the postseason.

The Vols, on the other hand, will play their NCAA opener at 12:25 p.m. Friday against eighth-seeded Oklahoma State (22-11) in Dayton, Ohio.

“You don’t appreciate it,” Pearl said. “We just don’t. We don’t appreciate what it is.

“I appreciate this basketball team for what they’ve accomplished, and I appreciate the fact that we’re still playing in March and all that they’ve had to overcome. So enjoy the run, because I’d hate to be at some of those other places.”

But Pearl also went so far as to suggest he didn’t take full advantage of his team’s potential throughout an up-and-down season.

“My job every year is to get the most out of my team,” Pearl said. “I think for three years we came really close to getting the most out of them. I don’t think this year we got the most out of them.

“We got a lot. It could have been a little bit better. It could have been a lot worse. But I don’t know that this year I could say we got the most out of them.”

Tennessee fans apparently aren’t the only ones with lofty expectations.

KNOXVILLE — Tennessee men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl didn’t push his players much in a nearly two-and-a-half-hour workout Tuesday afternoon at Thompson-Boling Arena.

The ninth-seeded Volunteers spent most of their time walking through their scouting report for No. 8 seed Oklahoma State, their opponent in the opening round of the NCAA tournament’s East Region at 12:25 p.m. Friday in Dayton, Ohio.

It only made sense to have a light practice Tuesday after an off day Monday, Pearl explained, considering that UT played three straight days over the weekend at the SEC tournament in Tampa, Fla.

After all, that’s what legendary UT women’s coach Pat Summitt would have done.

“I think the kids were surprised,” Pearl said. “I think they thought we were going to have a hard practice today. I just didn’t think it was in our best interest. Coach Summitt has always talked about keeping (players) fresh and keeping them furious, so today was one of those days.”

The Vols will hold a more physical workout Wednesday before going through their scheduled open practice at UD Arena at noon Thursday.

Pearl called Oklahoma State “a tough scout.”

The Cowboys have no starter taller than 6 feet 6 inches and rank among the nation’s top scoring and 3-point-shooting offenses under first-year coach Travis Ford, a former Kentucky guard under Rick Pitino.

“They do good stuff, and they’ve got counters to what they do,” he said. “It’s also a tough thing to walk through, because everything they do is so much faster.”

Maryville High School baseball coach Jim Gaylor still has concerns about his senior-laden but relatively inexperienced team.

Not that he was dwelling on them too much Monday night.

The Rebels rallied from a six-run deficit in the bottom of the seventh inning for a season-opening, 13-12 victory over crosstown rival Heritage at Maryville College’s Scotland Yard.

First baseman Patrick Johnson, who returned from a stomach illness to drive in the winning run with a two-out, three-run double to right-center field, was one of six seniors in the starting lineup for Maryville (1-0, 1-0 District 4-AAA).

But that number is a little misleading, Gaylor said. The Rebels have only three returning positional starters playing exactly where they were last season.

“We’re just green in a lot of positions,” he said. “There’s a lot of defensive stuff they’re learning every day, and discipline at the plate and those kinds of things. They know they’ve got to work at it on a continuing basis for us to get anywhere close to where we would like to get.

“We’re not there now, but that’s certainly a fun way to start the season.”

The seventh-inning comeback against the Mountaineers (0-1, 0-1) effectively nullified a shaky start from Maryville’s youthful pitching staff.

Right-hander Tommy Wilkinson, a sophomore, earned the start in the opener and allowed six earned runs over four innings. Right-hander Ryan Dalton and left-hander Drew Tinker, both seniors, gave up a combined six runs in three innings of relief.

Junior right-hander Kaleb Moore, who will start Thursday at South-Doyle, is perhaps the most battle-tested member of the starting rotation. Gaylor said Moore worked all of “maybe 10 or 15 innings” last season.

“The starters,” Gaylor added, “they’re all new.”

A memorable, come-from-behind win to start the season helped the Rebels forget about their shortcomings.

“This really makes us think about what all we can do for the rest of the season,” said Johnson, who finished 3-for-3 with four RBIs and a walk after missing more than four innings because of his illness.

“It really gets us pumped for the next game.”

Heritage also has a few reasons to be excited, even after a crushing defeat.

Coach Robbie Bennett’s lineup, which looked almost identical to the one he used throughout last season, produced plenty of offense. The Mountaineers pounded out 15 hits and scored multiple runs in four different innings, building a 12-6 lead by the top of the seventh inning after spotting Maryville a four-run advantage in the first.

“We’ve got a lot of experience,” Bennett said. “We hit the ball good enough to win.”

Heritage starting pitcher Jordan Caughron settled down after giving up four runs on only one hit in the first, cruising through three scoreless innings before giving up his sixth and final run in the sixth inning.

The bullpen wasn’t quite as reliable.

Side-armed right-hander Daniel Brinley got Maryville’s Alex McCloud to line into an inning-ending double play in the sixth before allowing five runs in the seventh. Tyler Edmonds inherited a 12-10 lead and was charged with the tying and go-ahead runs.

The Mountaineers also made two errors. One of them — an errant throw by sophomore catcher Brandon Malone with two outs in the seventh — kept Maryville’s late rally alive.

“Defensively, we just have to know that we can make the plays,” Bennett said. “We have to have confidence in each other, and they have to have confidence in themselves to make plays. We’ve just got to believe we can win.

“They know what they need to do to get better.”