State of Basketball in the State of Tennessee

Last year, the state of Tennessee for the first time certainly in recent memory and probably ever had 3 teams slated for top 4 seeds by the NCAA Basketball Committee. This fact combined with little known Nashville's Belmont University nearly knocking off Duke in the first round of the NCAA West Region made 2007 certainly a strong year for the state's basketball programs.

The future is showing no signs of slowing for the state's basketball programs if a little known recruiting service known as Rivals is any indication. After taking a look at Rivals.com recent top 100 rankings of prep basketball recruits, the state of Tennessee is in the lead with 11 committed prospects with Vanderbilt and Memphis leading the way with 4 prospects inked and Tennessee lagging behind with three. Just as bonus information, Florida is second with 9, and North Carolina, home to historic programs such as NC State, Duke and UNC is third with 7.

From this data above, one can only reasonably conclude that the best basketball located in I-40 is not Tabacco Road which connects these three aforementioned ACC powerhouses, but rather it's the portion of I-40 that stretches across Tennessee connecting Memphis to Vanderbilt to Tennessee.