Welcome to our weekly column, the State of the Vols. Here we look at the pulse of UT football and basketball. Check back next Monday to keep abreast of what’s going on and what’s coming up with UT sports.

Football: We’re a week and a half away from spring practice. Jones will kick things off with a press conference March 6th and Tennessee’s first practice will be the following day. In preparation, the Vols are wrapping up offseason strength and conditioning. Multiple players have added much-needed weight this offseason. Vol quarterback Josh Dobbs, who was officially listed at 190 pounds when he enrolled but looked to be more in the 180 pound range, is up to 210 pounds. That’s a nice playing weight for Tennessee’s young signal caller.

I expect Dobbs and Ferguson to get every chance to win the job before the season starts, but that doesn’t mean Worley and Peterman won’t get their chances to take the reins of the team. I’ll go into specifics as to why I think one of UT’s young guns will be quarterbacking the team this fall in our spring practice primer series. Look for that series to kick off tomorrow.

Freshman cornerback Emmanuel Moseley, who came in at a slight 165 pounds, is up to 180 pounds and looks like he’ll have the size needed to play corner once the season starts. That’s good news for the Vols because he’s an absolute burner—he ran multiple sub 4.4 40-yard dashes at a Tennessee camp. Moseley is one of the least discussed prospects in the 2014 class but that won’t stop him from challenging for a starting job if he can maintain his speed at his now heavier weight. He’s one of the first Vols I’ll evaluate once spring practice kicks off.

On the recruiting front, Tennessee’s 2015 class is sitting at 8th nationally with seven commitments per 247Sports. The Vols will be hosting their second junior day of the year this weekend. Several of the nation’s top prospects plus several current Vol commits are expected to make the trip. I’ll have a detailed list for you later in the week.

Basketball: It’s no secret that Martin is on the hot seat. One high-level source within the athletic department summed it up best BEFORE the season in a discussion we had about Vol hoops. When talking about the upcoming season, I said the team appeared primed to make an NCAA Tournament run for the first time in Martin’s tenure. The source responded simply, “He better.” That about sums it up. It’s NCAA or bust for this team and likely NCAA or bust for Martin’s job. Fair or not. That’s the reality of the situation.

On the court, it was another miserable week for Vol hoops—though it didn’t start out that way. The Vols marched to a convincing 19-point victory over Georgia (an RPI top-100 team) to start the week and looked like they might be righting the ship. Then the wheels fell off in College Station.

Tennessee nearly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with a furious late rally. Barton made what appeared to be the game-winning three. It was wiped off due to a timeout. Then Stokes made the game-tying bucket and went to the line for the win. He missed. The Vols went to overtime. And the rest is history.

Losing to A&M looked like a resume-killing loss, and it certainly may end up that way, but right now the Vols are IN the NCAA Tournament field according to Joe Lunardi and barely OUT according to several other bracket experts. This team’s fate clearly still hangs in the balance.

One thing is sure: they absolutely HAVE to go 2-0 this week. A road loss at Mississippi State (Wednesday 8 pm, TV: SEC) or a home loss to Vanderbilt (Saturday 12 pm, TV: ESPN/ESPN2) would doom the Vols. “Our goal doesn’t change as far as making the NCAA Tournament, that doesn’t change. I think there’s some games we had an opportunity to win we came up short in, but that goal doesn’t change at all,” Martin said in his weekly press conference.

I’ll have an honest look at the expectations for this program, Martin’s job security, and the growing “Bring Back Bruce” movement posted Tuesday afternoon.