Anchor Drop, March 8, 2018: Basketball season is over

Good morning. You probably already knew this, but Vanderbilt ended its basketball season last night with a thud in a 78-62 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs in the first round of the SEC Tournament.

I’m heading to Rome tomorrow, so updates will be pretty sparse over the next week or so, but that will also give me some time to get together my final thoughts on the season. I think the lack of a rim protector really doomed the team from the start; I made the mistake of thinking that’s something we could overcome, and to a large extent, we overcame the lack of an inside presence on the offensive end. We just couldn’t defend at all.

As I wrote before, Kevin Stallings’ “recruiting” during his last couple of years here showed up in a bad way this season. With Jeff, Riley, and Matt graduating, and with five-stars (and a couple of transfers) coming in, it’s entirely possible that six of the top seven players on next year’s team will be guys who were not playing for Vanderbilt this season. That tends to happen when you go 12-20.

I also don’t think Bryce Drew is done recruiting in the 2018 class. We know about Romeo Langford, but I think there’s going to be more roster turnover coming. If every underclassman returns, we’re currently at the scholarship limit and can’t add anyone else. But every underclassman is not returning. We’ll just find out who is leaving over the next few weeks.

Anyway, time to put that season in the rear view mirror and move on to the baseball team -- which, uh, lost to Long Beach State 4-3 last night.

The women’s lacrosse team plays at La Salle today at 5:00 PM CT.

Off the West End

It appears that the shit is hitting the fan in Pittsburgh. Honestly, it’s fun to snicker at the situation, but I’m starting to feel bad when I read the reports of how Pittsburgh fans and media treated him.

I suspect Stallings is just going to retire or go into the broadcast booth, but if he does want to coach again, I think I found an AD he’d mesh well with.

At the end of the Colorado-Arizona State game in the Pac-12 Tournament yesterday, Colorado’s coach hurt himself trying to break up a scuffle.

Michael Porter Jr. is returning today for Missouri. Luckily, he will not be doing so against us.