So we've already locked up a 1st round bye, but there is still quite a bit to play for heading into the SEC Tournament.

The first issue is getting better than a #4 seed to ensure you wouldn't face Kentucky until the SEC final.

But of course the biggest question left is NCAA seeding (and the hope of landing in a Nashville pod the first weekend, which only seems very likely if we get a 4 or better).

Outpacing Florida the rest of the season could go a long way to getting that higher seed, as I believe that Florida has only a slight edge over Vandy for the second highest SEC seed. I think that the 2nd SEC team will get at least a 5 seed and very possibly a 4 or better, so if Vandy can outshine Florida the rest of the way, we have a shot at getting a 4.

So here are the scenarios for seeding #2-5 in the SEC Tournament, as well as some implications that these seeds would have for the NCAA Tournament...

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They could have left.

Festus Ezeli and Jeffery Taylor had guys in their ears (as did John Jenkins) talking about the NBA, about first round picks, about the kind of money that makes it a lot easier to develop your game in a pro environment without the hassle and inconvenience of classes or having to worry about what your share of the bill was. They had track records and stats and the promise of a bright future. They didn't have to come back.

Except they did come back. Because they felt they had to. And that tells you about the character of this team, of these guys that we've lived and died with for four years.

I didn't see a lot of that first season in 08-09, because I knew it was a huge reloading year and I figured I could wait patiently (and I was still recoiling from the Siena fiasco) but when the Dores came through St Mary's in November of '09, I had to go see the show. What I expected to see was AJ and Dolla Beal wilding out and John Jenkins being a freshman sensation. What I got was Jeffrey Taylor, who I described after the game as "the deadliest-shooting 44 in the Bay Area since Dirty Harry Callahan hung it up."

Well, you know the rest. Big wins and bigger heartbreak and a team that keeps marching up the school's all-time charts...but no NCAA tournament wins yet. These guys have an unfinished line on the resume that they weren't going to leave blank. But I think they also just wanted one more year to ride together, which is why Jeffrey Taylor was tearing up on ESPN last night (and why I was blubbering like a sorority girl on Bid Night).

This time last year, don't forget, we were wargaming what this season would look like without Ezili, Taylor and Jenkins, and it wasn't pretty. But our guys all used the words "unfinished business" when they came back, and it's a damn good thing they did...because in the words of Jim Ross, business is about to pick up.

Go Dores. Sink the Vols.

"Cal said that he told Davis if he could make 45 three-pointers in five minutes, he could start taking them in games.

Davis made 49."

If the NCAA's best player can take his game onto the perimeter and burn players after setting screens, then Kentucky has become just that much more unstoppable. If he can actually consistently make his shots then I don't want to ever play this team again. Ever.

Granted, this entire factoid comes from a UK fan on Reddit. But I have no reason to doubt him.

http://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeBasketball/comments/pryov/anthony_davis_has_the_green_light_to_shoot_3s/

Or, Your Guide To How To Waste Time In The Land Of The Future While The Vandy Boys Are Doing Something Other Than Tanning Some Cardinal Ass.

Honest confession time: I have been an inside sleeper agent since the last time the Dores came this far west. I have actually been employed by Stanford University and as such have been able to thoroughly salt the ground for our returning forces. (I am not worried about Stanford fans seeing this, because there are no such things as Stanford fans.)

So for those of you who are making the trip to the Valley of Heart's Delight (which is what it was called when there were only orchards as far as the eye can see), some advice on the local area, especially if you're not going all the way to the city or to Napa:

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Hi Commodore fans, I'm wondering if anybody has some inside scoop on what Kevin Stallings has going on insofar as recruiting efforts. We all know that the team could very well lose three of the top sixty players in college basketball (Ezeli, Taylor and Jenkins) as well as key role players Goulbourne, Tinsley and Tchiengang. I'm very concerned because Vandy is losing a number of top echelon players and none of the prospects signed thusfar are in anybody's top 100 that I have seen.

What we know so far is that Stallings has German wingman Kevin Bright, AJ Astroth and Nigerian center Arnold Okechukwu in the fold. Of the three Okechukwu intrigues me the most; he could be another Festus Ezeli in the making and sports a 7'1" wingspan as well as good defensive credentials. I've also see where Vanderbilt is talking to #2 Kentucky prospect Darryl Hicks; that notwithstanding there are still some top 150 guys still on the board, notably 6-10 center Phillip Nolan and 6-8 power forward Amile Jefferson.

Next year looks like a pretty big concern for me; anybody have some inside scoop about other prospects the Commodores are looking at?

(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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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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