Anchor Drop, January 28, 2021: Scotty’s Career Night Not Enough

Good morning.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Vanderbilt rallied last night in Gainesville but couldn’t quite catch up to Florida. The Commodores trailed by 22 points with under ten minutes to play, but a furious rally — Vanderbilt went on a 13-2 run to close the game to four in the final minute — couldn’t quite come up with a win in a 78-71 loss. Scotty Pippen Jr. had a career-high 32 points and Dylan Disu had 18, which honestly might be the worst thing that could have happened, because Vanderbilt desperately needs another scoring option to step up.

That said, Vanderbilt is coming up on a stretch of winnable games. Here are Vanderbilt’s next six games: South Carolina, at Texas A&M, at Georgia, Auburn, at Mississippi State, and Kentucky. Aside from Auburn, none of those teams are playing particularly well right now, and Vanderbilt already came close against Mississippi State and Kentucky. Texas A&M has the worst offense in the SEC and it’s not even close. And as for Georgia...

The SEC released Vanderbilt’s 2021 football schedule yesterday, and Chad Bishop breaks it down. Also, the football team announced Gerald “Smoke” Dixon as its new director of scouting, along with making official three non-coaching staff members who are holdovers from the previous staff.

And finally, on the subject of Tennessee’s new head coach, I give you this (cc: Donnie Tyndall’s Haircut):