(NB: All opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. King and Train have been very kind in allowing me the use of their soapbox, and in the cold light of day, I don't want my bourbon-fueled assessment of last night to reflect on anyone's judgement but my own. That said, I can't bottle this up any longer.)

Bright side first: We are 10-2 in our last 12 games, with only one of those losses coming in regulation (Arkansas, where we've won only once in the last seven or eight tries anyway), and our overall record shows that three of our six losses were against top-15-ranked teams. If you didn't know anything about this Vanderbilt team, you'd think things are going pretty well.

But we know about this team. More important, we know where we were ranked in the preseason. We know how this team has flamed out down the stretch for the last two years. And we know this year was when things were going to be different. In 2011-12, more than ever before, it was possible to say "the future is now" because we know what comes next year: barring a miracle, this team will have no scholarship seniors and only two juniors, one of whom only got meaningful playing time for the first time all season in last night's loss at Arkansas.

It's nobody's fault that Fes got hurt. It's asinine that he was suspended, but the injury did for that anyway. It's nobody's fault that Hendo was lost for the year and that we had to play with Stevie Thunder out of position for the first dozen games or so, and that our frontcourt didn't round into shape until January 1. Maybe we're just snakebit.

But we can no longer duck the question - we have to seriously consider whether the problem is at the end of the bench.

Here, then, is the bill of charges against Coach Kevin Stallings. J'accuse:

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Lunardi currently has Vandy as a 4 seed playing in Portland against Iona. Should we win that game, we face the winner of Wisconsin and Middle Tennessee. Six teams from our non-conference schedule make his bracket. Of those 6 games we are 0-3 without Ezeli, including 2 overtime losses (Cleveland State, Louisville, Xavier). With Ezeli we are 3-0 including two road wins (Davidson, Marquette, Middle Tennessee). One team is on his next 4 list, North Carolina State, which was a win at a neutral site.

The rest of us are just along for the ride.

Prior to last season, there was much discussion about who would be the team leader. There was a pretty good argument to be made that Jeff would be the natural go-to guy, given his off-the-chart abilities and the possibility that he would enter the draft following his junior season. At the same time, there was the shooting prodigy in John Jenkins who seemed poised for a breakout season, given that he was a bit underused (but unbelievably effective) as a freshman role player.

As the season wore on, Jenkins blossomed into the premier scorer in the SEC, while Jeff had a somewhat frustrating year where he was simultaneously brilliant on defense and maddeningly inconsistent on the offensive end, inexplicably disappearing for long stretches during games. It became John Jenkins’ team, though his inability to get his own shot off against premier defenses limited our ability to win close contests (as did our porous defense, but that’s another discussion altogether).

This season, conventional wisdom was that it would again be Jenkins’ team, and he was given preseason first team SEC honors as well as preseason SEC POTY and AA consideration. Jeff was hardly an afterthought, given his first team placement on both the coaches and media preseason first team selections, but there wasn’t a lot of talk of him being a possible SEC POTY. Given the overall consistency of his first three seasons, Taylor had established who he was in the minds of many observers.

Jeff Taylor had other plans.

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Or, How we are becomming a team less likely to repeat the first round exits of the past two seasons.

While the estimated pace for the Alabama game was around 68 possessions (and up until the final four minutes we were probably on a 64 possession game), this represents the fastest game we’ve been involved with since SEC play started. While CKS has stated (and in previous seasons exhibited) a desire to push the tempo with this particular group of players, we’ve seen a pattern of teams being able to force us to play at a slower tempo than we would like, in part to take away Jeff Taylor and John Jenkins’ ability to finish on the break.

Last season this resulted in disaster – especially as the season wore on. The final 10 games we played at a tempo of 65 possessions (67 possessions in a game is the DI average) or less we gave up the following PPP on defense (starting with the Arkansas game): 1.39, 0.97, 0.94, 1.21, 1.19, 0.96, 1.04, 1.26, 1.19 and finally 1.28 PPP to Richmond in a plodding 54 possession game.

There were several reasons for the defensive ineptitude, but when it came down to it, patient teams were generally able to exploit our perimeter defense and post defense off the bench. It didn’t help that opponents were almost guaranteed to get a shot off (we were horrible at forcing turnovers) and had a better than average chance of rebounding their misses, but the main problem was we gave up way too many open looks when forced to defend over an extended period of time.

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With the defensive domination of Auburn, we are starting to see more consistent defensive performances from the team now that Festus has gotten his defensive timing down. It is also very clear that this team is a better defense than the one we saw at the end of last season, where almost every game was close due to our overall inability to consistently stop anybody.

Last season, while we allowed poor percentages from both inside and outside the arc and did a very good job of not putting the opposition on the foul line, our adjusted defensive efficiency was near the bottom of the teams that made the tournament. The reason for this seeming contradiction was due to a couple of reasons – we almost never created any turnovers and were an average defensive rebounding team. On average we stole the ball on 7.5% of defensive possessions and created turnovers on just 17.5% of them. While this is generally a product of the defensive style that CKS employs (a non-gambling man defense that is meant to contest shots as opposed to create turnovers), our opponent's turnovers seemed to hit bottom last season. In addition, we were unable to corral enough of our opponents misses, leading to several frustrating possessions where the opposition got multiple shots at the basket.

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Date Opponent Location
Aug. 30 South Carolina Nashville
Sept. 8 at Northwestern Evanston, Ill.
Sept. 15 Presbyterian Nashville
Sept. 22 at Georgia Athens, Ga.
Oct. 6 at Missouri Columbia, Mo.
Oct. 13 Florida Nashville
Oct. 20 Auburn Nashville
Oct. 27 UMass (HC) Nashville
Nov. 3 at Kentucky Lexington, Ky.
Nov. 10 at Ole Miss Oxford, Miss.
Nov. 17 Tennessee Nashville
Nov. 24 at Wake Forest Winston-Salem, N.C.

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The culture is changing, we finally have the right staff in place, and we're on the cusp of competing for the SEC Crown ... now it's time to address our appearance! I know that I've posted a similar piece at the beginning of the season but with Nike's recent unveiling of Oregon's 'Rose Bowl' uniform as a dedicated Vandy fan I can't help but want to ask the question: What is Vanderbilt doing in the uniform/equipment department?

Imagine a Vandy team with one of the best looking uniforms; not only in the SEC, but in the country!

via thebiglead.fantasysportsven.netdna-cdn.com

http://www.nikeinc.com/news/oregon-ducks-will-wear-most-innovative-football-uniform-to-date-for-rose-bowl#/inline/6240

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Or, more accurately put, "cut and pasted from the Longwood Athletics website":

The Lancers of ninth-year head coach Mike Gillian are 4-6 overall for its second-best start to a season since beginning the Division I scheduling with 2004-05. Senior Antwan Carter|St. Petersburg, Fla. (St. Petersburg) (16.5 points, 8.9 rebounds), along with classmate Jeremiah Bowman|Washington, D.C. (Harcum JC) (14.2 points, 5.6 assists), continue to lead the team this season.

Look, let's be honest, this is supposed to be a milk run. This was intended to be a breather for the new kids to get some reps. This, in short, is a gimme.

This team doesn't have a gimme anymore. We need a win, a resounding thumping, and we need to get this squad on track. If THIS game gets tight, it may be time to get VBK on the phone and start making amends.

Hippity Huz? HIPPITY HUZ.

Not sure if anyone in the braintrust caught this yet, but I think it's incredible: Gus Malzahn is leaving his OC position at Auburn to be head coach at Arkansas State. The same Gus Malzahn who was thisclose to being Vanderbilt's head coach just a year ago is now filling the shoes of Hugh Freeze, and is expected to make just $850,000 per year instead of the $1.3 million reasons he had to stay at Auburn.

This is weird. I know I was pretty disappointed that Vanderbilt couldn't land Malzahn last year, but it turns out, obvs, that David Williams made the right choice in hiring James Franklin. Stuff like this does make you wonder, though...what's wrong with that guy? Why leave a comfortable spot (apparently) at Auburn to take the reigns of a [/looks up conference] Sun Belt team heading to the GoDaddy.com Bowl? Seems like he either missed a golden opportunity to get a good HC job at a Big Six school or he just really likes....Arkansas? I guess?

(Or, sometimes the coaching is just picking his poison)

First off, I was very happy with the effort against Louisville - we defended pretty well and we fought very hard against a top ten team in their gym without two of our three centers. The game against Louisville was interesting because it marked a change in the rotations that CKS likes to use - instead of bringing several players off the bench, he limited the bench minutes to three players - Johnson, Parker and Odom and really only played Odom and Johnson more than token minutes. As a result, all five starters played over 40 minutes, which is unprecedented for the 13 years that CKS has been head coach.

There have been many who have been critical of CKS' attempts to develop his bench, which has led at times to us giving away leads. Unfortunately (contrary to the complainer's misconception), it isn't simply a matter of CKS being a poor coach, or "stubborn". As we could see at the end of the game, all five of our players were absolutely gassed. This led to turnovers that increased as the game went along, missed free throws, and defensive breakdowns. In addition, we go one game where our bench gets little to no experince in a game situation that we might face later in the year, and those players will have to face next season.

Personally, I believe that CKS devised a very good plan to attack Louisville's pressure and halfcourt defense, which is excellent. Louisville's strength is denying three point attempts and we were still able to get off 26 good looks from three, hitting them at a 38% clip. We were also able to work around our complete lack of an inside game by drawing fouls, which unfortunately we were unable to convert. Given the level of competition that we have faced over the last couple of games and the increased level of defense I have seen from the guards there is a lot of reasons to be optimistc about what is going on even in the wake of the disappoiting losses. To some extent, these losses seem similar, except we were losing this way with a power inside game and a premeire shot blocker and offensive rebounder who drew a ton of fouls. We are essentially at the level we were last season, but doing so without Ezeli.

Yes these losses are frustrating, but we are essentially asking our starters to play 90% of the available minutes in these games - given that we are not getting much from the bench we are going to be limited until somebody steps up. But it is clear to me that each of our starters are better players this season.