Anchor Drop, March 27, 2019: A nice problem to have

Good morning.

Vanderbilt beat Lipscomb 15-1 at First Tennessee Park on Tuesday night, and here’s Mason Hickman’s pitching line: six innings, one hit, one walk, eight strikeouts, and no runs. That followed last Tuesday’s performance against Belmont — six innings, no runs, three hits, two walks, 12 strikeouts — and in fact, Hickman hasn’t given up a run in his last six outings. Over that time, he’s pitched 23 innings, allowed just eleven hits and five walks, and struck out 33 batters.

Granted, it’s been against Austin Peay, Dayton, ETSU, Samford, Belmont, and Lipscomb — not exactly a murderer’s row. But it’s also clearly deserving of a weekend rotation spot. Except, well, just who do you remove from the rotation? Drake Fellows isn’t a prototypical Friday starter, but he’s done nothing to lose that job. Patrick Raby currently sports a 0.57 ERA. And Kumar Rocker probably has the most upside of anyone on the staff. It’s a great problem to have.

Women’s golf beat Sacramento State in the semifinals of the Lamkin Invitational on Tuesday and will play Cal today in the finals.

The men’s basketball team still doesn’t have a coach, but Stephanie White will be back to coach the women’s team next season, the school announced on Tuesday. If you had told me in December that White would be retained and Drew would not, I’d have called you a liar.

As to the men’s coaching search, well, Orlando media is to the point where they’re straight up asking UCF head coach about it, which tells you where things stand:

I’ll have more coaching search profiles coming today. We’re running them until either we have a coach or we reach Donnie Tyndall on the candidate list, at which point we should set the Anchor of Gold comments section on fire.