Anchor Drop, May 23, 2018: So Close

Good morning.

The Vanderbilt women’s tennis team lost to Stanford, 4-3, in the national title game, falling just short of winning its second national championship in four years. Vanderbilt took the doubles point to go up 1-0, but Stanford won five of six first sets in the singles matches, with only senior Astra Sharma winning her first set.

Stanford knotted the match at 1-all after Emma Higuchi won her match against Summer Dvorak, 6-3, 6-2. Carolina Lampl gave Stanford a 2-1 lead with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Christina Rosca. Sharma beat Michaela Gordon, 7-6, 6-3 to even the match at 2 apiece.

After Emma Kurtz lost her match, Amanda Meyer won in the third set to even the score at 3. That left it up to Fernanda Contreras, who got her match against Stanford’s Melissa Lord to 5-5 in the final set — but Lord took the next two games to win the match and the championship. So Vanderbilt came up just short, but overall this was a great season for the Commodores.

The baseball team’s stay in Hoover for the SEC Tournament was short, as the Commodores lost to Texas A&M, 3-1, in the first game of the tournament. Now Vanderbilt will await the NCAA Tournament selection show next Monday.

Tweet of the Day

Off the West End

The Houston Rockets won a classic over the Warriors to even the Western Conference Finals at 2-2.

Hey, and speaking of Houston sports (I know, I know), Tony Kemp had 5 RBIs last night! (Also, if VandyImport is keeping score, that’s Houston 2, Bay Area 0.)

NFL owners think it’s important to do something about national anthem protests, and somebody in the room came up with the stupidest idea possible:

But what if there are offsetting penalties? Think about it.

And speaking of anthem protests, one thing that came out during the discovery phase of Colin Kaepernick’s collusion lawsuit against the league is that at least a few NFL teams thought he was still good enough to start in the league. This much should be obvious in a league where at least one team thought Tom Savage and T.J. Yates were good enough to start multiple games (at least, after Deshaun Watson got hurt), as though it was never clear that the reason Kaepernick was unemployed had nothing to do with football.

(Now, the question, of course, is whether there was any coordination among owners or if 32 owners just happened to come to that conclusion independently. I would bet on the former, but it probably can’t be proven because surely they weren’t stupid enough to leave a paper trail. But there sure have been a lot of NFL writers willing to put their credibility on the line to carry water for the league; after all, how many takes have we read indicating that NFL teams didn’t view him as a starter?)

Anyway, nobody’s changing their opinions about this; I do think it’s interesting, though, how much this is laying bare that about 90 percent of NFL franchises don’t particularly care if they field a winning or even competitive team. And you wonder why the NFL has such a stale product.

Meanwhile, the League has some new kickoff rules, which are sure to go over well with the “FOOTBAW!” crowd that they’re bending over backwards to accommodate with the proposed anthem rules.

Gary Parrish has a new Top 25 (and one) for next college basketball season. The #3 team (and, well, #4) makes me want to vomit.