Anchor Drop, December 25, 2021: Merry Christmas from AoG

Good morning, and Merry Christmas from your friends at AoG.

Tonight at about 8 PM CT on ESPN2, Vanderbilt plays Stanford in the finals of the Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu. After beating Hawaii and BYU in the first two games of the tournament, the Commodores are up to 83 in the NET rankings and, possibly more importantly, added a Quad 1 win to their resume (which isn’t much at this point, but there’s plenty of time to improve it in SEC play.) Stanford isn’t a Quad 1 opportunity, but a win over the Cardinal would still mean that this tournament has gone as well as it possibly could have for Vanderbilt.

Also, how weird is it that Vanderbilt will have played Stanford in baseball, football, and basketball in calendar year 2021 — and only one of the three games was on either school’s campus?

The Camellia Bowl between Ball State and Georgia State is today at 1:30 PM CT on ESPN; I’m not about to encourage you to watch that instead of spending time with your families, so no open thread for that (use this!) but there will of course be a game thread for tonight’s basketball game.

SEC Basketball Schedule and Picks

Season to date: 18-26 ATS, 24-20 totals

• Stanford vs. Vanderbilt (8:00 PM CT, ESPN2): Vanderbilt -2, Under 135.5