Good morning.
Optional Musical Accompaniment
You know what Pinman at the top of the page means: it’s bowling time. Vanderbilt bowling hosts the Columbia 300 Music City Classic this weekend at the Smyrna Bowling Center, with action starting with five Baker matches at 9:40 AM. Live stream as usual is on the bowling team’s YouTube channel.
And for you normies, baseball opens a three-game weekend series against Illinois-Chicago today at 4:30 PM CT. All three games can be streamed on the SEC Network+. Andrew has your preview and game thread coming later today.
The tennis teams are both in action today. Women’s tennis travels to Arkansas (which is ranked 23rd) at 3:00 PM CT (I think this is a stream for it) while men’s tennis is at MTSU at 5 PM CT (stream here.)
Basketball briefly stepped out of conference to drill Cincinnati last night, 78-64. Scotty Pippen Jr. returned from a three-game absence due to a hip flexor injury with his best performance yet, dropping 36 points on the Bearcats on just 13 field goal attempts. And keep in mind, this was without Dylan Disu. You are excused for being somewhat excited about next year’s team. Vanderbilt is now up to 91 in KenPom, the highest they’ve been ranked since January 16, 2019.
And speaking of excitement, again, you are excused for being somewhat excited about the football program:
“We’re not putting governors on success here,” Lea said. “We know that success is going to be the accumulation of small wins for us. We also know and believe that that mindset applied over time gives us access to any goal that we wish to achieve as a program. I’m not backing down from making statements about winning here and separating from our competition and the things we feel like are going to separate us long-term from a competitive aspect. Honestly, since I left my time as a player, just this idea to grow this program the right way, the first thing you’re going to have to do is just completely cut off this persistent negative mindset around the program, both internally and externally.”
This Clark Lea guy seems like he knows what he’s doing.
And finally, we’re officially at that time of year when weekday college basketball (during the day) becomes a thing. I recommend you look at Blogging the Bracket for your daytime viewing schedule.