Vanderbilt Basketball Player Preview: Lee Dort

During Jerry Stackhouse’s first couple of years at Vanderbilt, we wondered about whether he’d recruit at a high enough level to get Vanderbilt back to the level we like to see them at. That changed in April 2021 when Stackhouse got commitments from Lee Dort and Noah Shelby, both from Greenhill School in Dallas — and both of whom lived under the same roof.

We’ll talk about Dort today. Listed at 6’10” and 250 pounds, Dort has good size and runs the floor well, and he also has a decent set of low-post moves. The question, as it is for every freshman big man who comes in, is how ready he is to play in the SEC. Big men often have the most difficult transition from high school to college ball just because, in college, they find out pretty quickly that they can’t just overwhelm opponents with their size and athletic ability — and they might actually have to defend guys like Oscar Tshiebwe, who have all their size and athletic ability but also have spent two or three years developing their skills at the college level. Dort’s evaluation on his 247 Sports page suggests that his conditioning needs to improve.

With all that said — well, Vanderbilt already has Liam Robbins and Quentin Millora-Brown on the roster. Robbins has his own set of issues (namely, his foot) and Millora-Brown isn’t much of an offensive force, but the two of them will probably soak up 30 minutes a night or so assuming both are healthy. That’s probably an ideal situation for Dort to step into: Vanderbilt probably won’t need more than 10-15 minutes a night out of him, and so conditioning and the ability to avoid fouls probably aren’t going to be issues right away. And, it will also help Robbins and Millora-Brown, too, knowing that they have a four-star freshman available off the bench should both of them get into foul trouble.