The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 19-12, 8-8 SEC

2009-10's toughest games: at Kentucky, at Tennessee, at Illinois, Mississippi State

Primary attraction: Kevin Stallings: College basketball coaching we can believe in.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. In which I admit my man crush on Kevin Stallings. Kevin Stallings had a pretty good offseason, and I'm not talking about the recruits he hauled in or the facilities he was able to revamp. No, I'm talking about public relations. Kevin Stallings killed this offseason's PR game, and I'll admit: It totally worked on me.

First there was the story of how Stallings walked out of an AAU tournament after being told he had to spend $295 on a player information packet. Stallings then took his story to the New York Times, providing Pete Thamel a very intriguing anecdotal lead. Stallings suddenly seemed like the principled man awash in a sea of scumbags, which may or may not be true, but sure gets the old man crush meter running.

Then there was this: Stallings gave up a $100,000 raise in order to send his team on a pre-planned trip to Australia after Vanderbilt, citing budget cuts, had decided to kibosh the trip altogether. Even if you are on a D-1 coach's salary, $100k is serious cheese, and Stallings' willingness to part with it is the equivalent of a friend willing to donate his money to insure everyone has a fun time. Those are the kinds of dudes you want to be around. So what I'm trying to say is: Kevin Stallings seems like a man you could grab a beer with. Stallings '12!

2. Oh, right: basketball. Fortunately for him, Stallings isn't just a nice guy; he's actually a pretty solid basketball coach, too. Stallings has taken the Commodores to two Sweet Sixteen appearances in his eight years at Vandy, and he could be looking at another tournament team in 2009-10. Vanderbilt returns its entire roster from a team that won 19 games, including center A.J. Ogilvy, who averaged 15 points and 7.1 rebounds a game before falling prey to injury in the latter half of the season. And pricey packets or no pricey packets, Stallings managed to land the No. 15 recruit in the country in the class of 2009, John Jenkins, whose outside shooting could make him a star early in his college career.

3. Memorial Gym is weird. What follows are a few interesting facts about Memorial Gym that I did not know until literally five minutes ago (all gleaned from Wikipedia, of course):

At the time of its construction, there was a serious discussion within the Vanderbilt community about whether the school should de-emphasize intercollegiate athletics. As a compromise, the gymnasium was built to hold only about 8,000 seats, and it would be readily adaptable to other uses. [...] The areas out of bounds along the sidelines were very wide, in contrast with the small facility which it replaced, where the walls were right along the sidelines and players could scrape their shoulders bringing the ball up the court. This necessitated the placement of the benches at the end of the court, which was not highly unusual at the time. [...] In addition, each goal is anchored by two far-reaching beams attached to support columns, with extra support coming from cables stretching all the way to the gym's ceiling. In the case of a backboard shatter or beam fracture, replacing these goals would be highly difficult, compared to the usual goal setup at most venues.

When you throw in the elevated court style -- so rare in modern gyms; Purdue is the only other court that uses the elevated court that immediately comes to mind -- I think it's fair to say that Memorial Gym (or the Memorial, as it's colloquially known) is among the weirdest gyms in all of the United States. I mean, who hangs their basketball hoops from the ceiling?

Related: SEC Basketball, The Hunt