NC State 70, Vanderbilt 66: Another close one

Of course this one came down to the wire.

Vanderbilt has now played eleven games this season; eight of them have been decided by fewer than ten points. In those games, the Commodores are 4-4, so they haven’t been exceptionally unlucky; they’ve played a bunch of close games and gone .500 in them. It’s certainly noteworthy that with the exception of Memphis and possibly this NC State team, they’ve all come against teams worse than the median SEC team; and, of course, it’s extremely noteworthy that two of those games were home games against Wofford and Grambling.

(It’s also noteworthy that one of the games that wasn’t decided by single digits was a home loss to Southern Miss. Shut up.)

With two games left in nonconference play, Vanderbilt hasn’t beaten a team better than Pitt (72nd in KenPom.) I don’t like where this season is going, but Vanderbilt’s penchant for playing close games could serve them well in SEC play if they can do that against the middle of the SEC.

Other than all that, there wasn’t anything exceptional about this game. Vanderbilt lost in all of the Four Factors, though not dramatically, and also lost the game. That’s generally how these things work.

• The most notable thing from Saturday night’s box score: Stackhouse is starting to shorten the bench, with only nine players appearing in Saturday night’s game (and Paul Lewis only played four minutes.) DNPs were Lee Dort, Emmanuel Ansong, Noah Shelby, and Malik Dia.
• Yeah, three of the four DNPs being freshmen is... kind of telling, considering the five-man freshman class was the main reason for optimism about the program’s future. These guys aren’t playing ahead of the guys who are barely beating Wofford and Grambling.
• Let’s start with the obvious: Liam Robbins and Jordan Wright being, respectively, fourth and sixth on the team in Game Score is probably not going to work. That’s being somewhat covered up by Tyrin Lawrence looking like a functional offensive player of late, but Vanderbilt needs those two to be better.
• Myles Stute doing what he does. Would be nice if he were getting help.
• On some level, this is an acceptable performance for Ezra Manjon, but it’s really not in this team’s best interest for Manjon to be attempting 12 shots and only dishing out one assist.
• Trey Thomas starting and playing 30 minutes isn’t in this team’s best interest, either.
• Rough night for Quentin Millora-Brown; I was honestly surprised at how much Vanderbilt’s bigs struggled with NC State’s DJ Burns, who finished with 18 points and 9 boards.

What’s Next

Vanderbilt hosts Alabama A&M on Thursday night at 7:00 PM CT on the SEC Network+, just a night after the women’s team hosts Alabama A&M. Why they couldn’t just do this as a doubleheader like a high school team, I don’t know.