Cleveland State Dominates a Sloppy Vanderbilt Team in 71-58 Upset

EASILY.

But there is absolutely NO excuse for that disaster of a performance. This team has a long way to go. If I were an AP voter, I would leave them off my ballot next week. UK and UF would smoke this team by 30+ if they played right now.

CKS has to find a way to make the offense less 1-dimensional without Festus. Clearly post play without Fes isn’t half as good as post play with Fes, but we can’t completely abandon any attempt of going down low.

Otherwise it’s just effort and focus.

The effort was awful all night for almost everyone.

And for focus, the turnovers aren’t even mostly caused by their defense, which was solid, but more by getting frustrated by the defense, and just dribbling into a dead-end or making a stupid pass. Didn’t just about every 3 we took in the second half look like we stopped, thought, “should I take this shot? … Yeah, I should…” miss. The missed free throws are yet another example.

CKS needs to whip them into shape. But I’m not overly concerned.

But I really think maybe Festus is the most important player on this team. I still think JJ is the best player (and I honestly think Fes is better than Jeff anyway), but if we lose JJ or Jeff, we don’t entirely lose the ability to play behind the perimeter.

At least until CKS figures out how to get something going down low, or until we get Fes back, we’re way too easy to stop offensively.

JJ and JT are good enough players that we’ll win some as a 1 dimensional team, but if they have bad games, we will lose.

I do agree with what someone said in the game thread or maybe Twitter that Cleveland state beat us the same way Pearl’s teams did, by being quick, physical and high pressure.

I think CKS is a good coach, and he’s brought us a long way, but I still don’t know what I think about his game planning. He just doesn’t seem to react well to bad matchups. The same things tend to beat his teams, and obviously any system will have its weaknesses, but you have to show at least some ability to cover those weaknesses.

I know people also say he maybe doesn’t motivate well, but I think rather than lack of motivation it seems more like lack of focus/toughness. (thought today it looked like both).

As already noted, I wonder about his timeouts and still don’t know why, if he’s so good out of the timeout, we can never get a good last shot.

Add a new wrinkle today, the inexplicable non-use of Henderson when he plays in our biggest position of need and did relatively well in the 5% of the game he played. Henderson has a long way to go, and will struggle probably pretty frequently, but all we needed was some solid minutes at the 5 and he’s done that in both games this year. How he only played 2 minutes (during which he had 4 boards, a steal, drew a foul and saved a ball out of bounds) baffles me.

Compare his 2 minutes to Kedren and Dai-Jon and what they accomplished today in their 10 and 7 minutes.

I am not sold on CKS being a long term solution for this team if they want to really become an elite program. How many times do we have to see games like this before we try to go in another direction? With King leaving, I’m worried about the next 5 years.

Henderson could have been a good post presence tonight. Just his big body being down there would have kept the d honest and allowed some of our shooters to get open. Even if he isn’t as dominating as Fes, he is still 6’11 and capable of scoring/rebounding. I have no idea why CKS would ignore his abilities.

I really don’t know what to say about JT anymore. He showed up in spurts and barely tried to get to the rim for most of the game. For someone so athletic, he doesn’t seem to make great use of his gifts.

JJ was cold tonight, but he also didn’t seem to really try to get open as fervently as he did last year. Hell, DJ seemed to try harder when he was in the game.

It was like they were trying to play a perimeter game tonight and then refused to shoot when given the opportunity. The 15 or so missed layups didn’t help things much.

I don’t know what it will take to light a fire under these guys but CKS needs to figure that out…

As a Vandy fan this is the first time I’m more excited about the football season then the basketball. lol Thank god there is still a couple of games left and probably a bowl. “keeping my fingers crossed”.

Watching this team nearly blow a 20-point lead against Oregon, I began to wonder whether the prognosticators were wrong. Watching this team get blown off its home court by Cleveland St. hammered the point home – this team, at least without Festus, is pretty much the same team it was last year and the year before.

This team still lacks a post game other than Festus – if outside shots are not falling, we’re fucked. Taylor still makes poor decisions and doesn’t take care of the ball. Jenkins still cannot create opportunities other than running around the three-point line calling for the ball and the occasional fast break. The young guards off the bench (Parker, Fuller, Johnson) still look like they are not ready for primetime and cannot make wide open shots. The defense still cannot contain speedy guards.

It’s early, but I worry we are looking at a repeat of the past two seasons. Another good, but not great, regular season – punctuated with a few great games and performances against top opponents – followed by postseason disappointment. The struggles to start 2006 give me some hope that this year’s early season struggles are meaningless, but not much. I can’t help but think that our supposed Final Four team will just go down as another one-and-done “soft” Vandy squad.

SOV?

Tired of thinking about this game. November games mean so little, but good grief was that ever hard to watch.