Anchor Drop, August 6, 2019: 25 Days to Kickoff

Good morning.

We are now 25 days away from Vanderbilt football’s season opener against Georgia. There is no #25 on this year’s roster.

Vanderbilt women’s basketball announced its 2019-20 nonconference schedule on Monday. The highlight is a visit from national power UConn on November 13; other than that, it’s mostly the collection of OVC schools that you were probably expecting it to be. The season opener is November 5 against Jacksonville State.

Morgan Baxendale shot a 3-under-par 69 on the first day of the U.S. Women’s Amateur on Monday, putting her two strokes off the lead. Auston Kim is four off the lead at 1-under-par and in a tie for eleventh place. The top 64 golfers will advance to the match play portion of the event after tomorrow and both Vanderbilt golfers appear to be in very good position to advance.

Courtesy of VandySports.com, Derek Mason’s post-practice comments yesterday:

Also, interviews with Cam Watkins and Justice Shelton-Mosley:

Vanderbilt goes full pads today.

Off the West End

The nation’s number 1 basketball recruit is going to USC ... where his father is an assistant coach and his brother is on the team. Surprising.

UConn head coach Randy Edsall says that paying players is inevitable, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at his team.

Former five-star Georgia LB Brenton Cox has been dismissed from the team.

Danny Sheridan of course talks an inordinate amount of shit about the 16 worst Power 5 teams in college football in his Bittersweet 16 post, and of course you already knew that Vanderbilt was on the list at #14 (but two other SEC teams are worse!)

In fact, the “Harvard of the South” as they like to call themselves when no one is around to laugh out loud, has played such dreadful football for the last decade that head coach Derek Mason received a contract extension this past offseason, thanks to a sterling 24-38 record.

(Danny is wrong, of course. We refer to Harvard as the “Vanderbilt of the North.”)

The Sporting News also has their list of sleepers for the 2019 season.

From The Athletic ($): How a tiny Florida private school became a recruiting magnet ... The Age of Ideas: The 2000s ... State of the Hoops Program: USC.

Scoreboard

MLB: Mets 6, Marlins 2 (Game 1) ... Brewers 9, Pirates 7 ... Yankees 9, Orioles 6 ... White Sox 7, Tigers 4 ... Red Sox 7, Royals 5 ... Mets 5, Marlins 4 (Game 2) ... Rangers 1, Indians 0 ... Blue Jays 2, Rays 0 ... Reds 7, Angels 4 ... Cubs 6, A’s 5 ... Twins 5, Braves 3 ... Phillies 7, Diamondbacks 3 ... Nationals 4, Giants 0 ... Dodgers 8, Cardinals 0.