Anchor Drop, May 21, 2019: Hardware Edition

Good morning.

The headline from the SEC Baseball Awards, released yesterday, was JJ Bleday being named SEC Player of the Year (and Tim Corbin SEC Coach of the Year), but Commodores dotted the All-SEC teams as well. In addition to Bleday, Philip Clarke, Austin Martin, and Tyler Brown were named First Team All-SEC; Kumar Rocker landed on the Freshman All-SEC Team; and Martin and Julian Infante were named to the SEC All-Defensive Team.

Women’s golf finished its season with a 19-over round at the NCAA Championship. The Commodores finished 23rd, fifteen spots out of the eight-team match play championship.

Men’s tennis players Cameron Klinger and Billy Rowe open the NCAA Doubles Championship today, at the USTA Tennis Complex in Orlando. On the women’s side, Fernanda Contreras won on Monday to advance to the round of 32 in the singles championship.

Whitehaven High School coach Faragi Phillips appears set to be Vanderbilt’s third assistant coach in 2019-20.

Off the West End

Content from our sister blogs: College and Magnolia previews its Week 2 opponent, which it mistakenly refers to as an AAC team instead of treating this as a league game (hey, the SEC won’t make us recognize Missourah, and we’re still going to treat Tulane as an SEC team) ... Kentucky landed a top 10 recruit, which doesn’t seem newsworthy — until you realize we’re talking about football ... LSU landed a five-star recruit in basketball, which I’m sure was done in a completely above-board manner and no money changed hands ... Mississippi State basically kept Vanderbilt from sweeping all the SEC baseball awards ... Red Cup Rebellion made us remember Chad Kelly is still in the NFL ... Texas A&M is somehow the one school playing in the SEC Tournament today whose SB Nation blog posted about it.

When did the Lakers become the Knicks?

Because I hate all of you, Manchester City is the greatest team of the Premier League era. Meanwhile, SB Nation’s Andi Thomas wonders about the meaning of all of Europe’s Big Five soccer leagues having repeat champions. (Hell yeah, I’m posting about soccer to annoy VTPhD.)

Bill C.’s latest team preview: Boston College.

Scoreboard

NBA Playoffs: The Warriors are into the Finals for the fifth year in a row, finishing a sweep of the Blazers with a 119-117 win in overtime.

MLB: Former Vanderbilt pitcher David Price returned from the injured list with five solid innings, and the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays 12-2 ... the A’s beat Cleveland 6-4, but lost starting pitcher Brett Anderson ... the Yankees beat the Orioles 10-7, which doesn’t seem all that newsworthy ... the Mets snapped a five-game losing streak with a 5-3 win over the Nationals ... the Phillies won 5-4 over the Cubs in Jake Arrieta’s first start at Wrigley since leaving ... Mike Minor struck out eleven in six innings, and then the Rangers held on for dear life in a 10-9 win over the Mariners ... the Astros shut out the White Sox, 3-0 ... the Braves beat the Giants, 4-1, behind an excellent performance from Mike Soroka ... the Twins beat the Angels, 3-1 ... the Padres beat the Diamondbacks, 2-1.

Today: The San Jose Sharks look to keep the dream alive in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the St. Louis Blues (7:00 PM CT, NBC Sports) ... the Milwaukee Bucks look to go up 3-1 on the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference Finals (7:30 PM CT, TNT) ... Sonny Gray pitches for the Reds tonight in Milwaukee (6:40 PM CT) ... and, of course, there’s the SEC Tournament in Hoover, with four games today on the SEC Network: 11-seed Florida vs. 6-seed Texas A&M at 9:30 AM CT, followed by 10-seed Missouri vs. 7-seed Ole Miss; in the evening session, it’s 9-seed Tennessee vs. 8-seed Auburn at 4:30 PM CT, and 12-seed South Carolina vs. 5-seed LSU in the nightcap.

You’re not getting a separate live thread for the SEC Tournament today, by the way.