Anchor Drop, August 29, 2018: 3 Days

Good morning.

We’re just three days away from Vanderbilt’s season opener against Middle Tennessee. Two players on the roster wear #3. Sophomore safety Tae Daley played in 11 games in 2017 and had five total tackles on the season, mostly on special teams. True freshman running back Ja’Veon Marlow isn’t listed on the depth chart, but coaches have been impressed with him in fall camp.

Derek Mason held his first press conference of the season on Tuesday, and while the big news coming out of it was redshirt sophomore safety Zaire Jones’ suspension for the MTSU game following an arrest last week, we also saw the first depth chart of the season. While there weren’t any real surprises, we are keeping an eye on the ongoing competition for backup long snapper.

You can view the press conference on the VUCommodores YouTube page.

Oh yeah, and Mason’s Coach’s Show returns tonight at 7 PM CT on WLAC-AM and the Vanderbilt IMG Sports Network. $10 to the first person who calls in with a question about how wet our hets are.

There was also some significant news on the basketball recruiting front on Tuesday. Vanderbilt picked up its first commitment in the 2019 class with Austin Crowley, a four-star guard from West Point, Mississippi, who cancelled scheduled official visits to Minnesota and Ole Miss.

And potentially even bigger news: James Wiseman, the #1 recruit in the Rivals 150, set an official visit to Vanderbilt for the weekend of October 5. In minor details, he also set official visits to Kentucky and Kansas. Wiseman’s recruitment is widely viewed as a competition between Memphis and Kentucky, but hey... Bryce Drew has shown himself to be pretty good at closing the deal.

Tweet of the Day

Off the West End

In the latest in the stupid offseason story that won’t go away, Tom Herman went to a strip club with deposed Ohio State assistant coach Zach Smith.

ESPN disagrees with some of our Tuesday Talk projections of us making a bowl game.