The SEC's Worst Losses: Florida (Part I)

No question on that in my mind. It’s a must win.

Time to get on another good winning run which is possible if the team decides to play like it matters. It comes down to which team shows up. It’s not a must win, but would be a nice win.

I wish they only collapsed against those 2 schools – add Louisville, Xavier and Indiana State to the list. Florida has collapsed once or twice also.

As a heads up, CBS is providing regional coverage of this game. If you live in Big East territory, the game being televised is Notre Dame at Marquette. Therefore, get thee to a sports bar, or if you are like myself, Dork out in front of the computer. Honestly, I think this sucks.

Those 9pm games are too late for almost anyone. Maybe Fla’s late game last night will have them tired.

I wrote a lot and then realized the thread was dead.

Why we should fire Stallings after the year, barring a miracle run

I do understand the argument that Jason has made again and again. By any historical standard, Vandy basketball is in a golden age. During the VBK years, which I remember well, we used to wonder if we’d make the NIT rather than what seed we’d get in the NCAAs. A bad coaching change could easily bring us back to that.

Here are two reasons that I haven’t much seen addressed all that much for why should make the move anyway.

First, I think Stallings has burned out. I certainly cannot prove this in any quantifiable way but I think we’re now coasting on the last embers of an younger, better Stallings and our years of making the tournament nearly every year will end this year, with five out of six. Next year we will be wondering if we’ll make the NIT.

I don’t claim he’s a terrible coach or that he’ll never be successful again. A couple of years as an analyst and a fresh job — or maybe just the fresh job — may well make a new man out of him and give him the sort of success that will have us wishing we’d kept him. But I don’t think he’d have had that success here.

Second, I do not agree with those folks who say that Vandy isn’t a good enough job to land and retain a truly world class coach. Aside from a few bball royalty schools — UNC, Kentucky, Kansas and maybe UCLA — I think all big division schools are more or less even. Schools like Syracuse and UConn that are great every year for decades succeed not because of size or fan base but because they were smart enough to sign someone world class and keep him there.

On the other hand, basketball powerhouses that loose great coaches go to basketball also rans fast. Most of you guys are not old enough to remember how good teams like Arizona and Seton Hall and Georgetown were every single year. Even UCLA has sucked consistently the instant they lost a first rate coach and replaced him with a second-rate one.

In other words, I believe, had Jim Boeheim come to Vandy all those years ago, then all those tourney wins would be ours. (That’s why I don’t list Duke among the royalty. Duke has no advantage over anyone, except the fact that it has been helmed for three decades by the best coach in college history.)

But what about the private school lack of fan base and high academic standards? The first hurts us, but not as much as you think. Only the biggest public schools, in parts of the country that like college sports, have fan bases. Texas does. But if you really think anyone in Connecticut cares about UConn, you’re kidding yourself. Hell, most Big East teams play in parts of the country where no one gets worked up about college sports.

As for the academic standards, I think that helps put us just slightly above (not slightly below) nearly all the other schools in this largely flat college universe that I have mentioned. There are hundreds of big schools with low academic standards but only two or three places to go for bright kids who are not so unbelievably good that they’re shoo-ins for the NBA. It’s a smaller pool of kids, to be sure, but it’s a much much smaller pool of schools. Most of them won’t have Duke as an option, which brings it down to us or Stanford, really. Northwestern has never had a basketball program. Wake Forest is a far worse school and so small that you really need to want a small school (and yet, to get back to my earlier point, it was a perennial power when it had a great coach). What else is there? Emory? Rice?

The notion that some have peddled above that NC State is an inherently better position strikes me as absurd. What can you possibly say to make a kid want to come to NC State?

Of course getting and keeping a world class coach isn’t easy. But if the school employs the best talent spotters AND is willing to fire people who aren’t cutting it after two years on the job rather than keeping them around for five, we’ll eventually get our Jim Calhoun or Lute Olsen.

I think it’s at least worth a shot. Being almost good actually is worse than being really bad. Right now, the team gives me more misery than pleasure. During the VBK years, I just averted my eyes and thought nothing about them.