Anchor Drop, June 13, 2023: 74 Days to Kickoff

Good morning.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

We are now 74 days away from Vanderbilt football’s season opener against Hawaii. There is no 74 on the roster and there wasn’t last year either.

And speaking of that season opener!

Seriously, when was the last time we were an 18-point favorite against an FBS team? (Twitter says it was 2013 against UAB.)

Vanderbilt bowling visited the White House yesterday. Hail Pinman.

Women’s basketball officially announced the signing of Tennessee transfer Justine Pissott. New men’s tennis coach Scott “Not The Pitching Coach” Brown added two assistants. Devin Futrell and Carter Holton have been invited to the USA Baseball training camp. And Aria Gerson has a helpful tracker of where everyone on Vanderbilt’s baseball team is playing this summer.

With the field set for the College World Series, here’s how I would rank the eight teams in terms of rooting interest.

1. Wake Forest: Black and gold private school, this is almost like rooting for Vanderbilt.
2. Oral Roberts: Yep, underdog story. Only below Wake because this also functions as a reminder of how mad we are about the path to Omaha being wasted.
3. TCU: mostly for that NashVegas guy on Twitter, though also my boss went to TCU?
4. Stanford: sorry for not putting them last, Import.
5. Virginia: Still mad about 2015.
6. LSU: Somehow the least offensive of the three SEC teams in Omaha?
7. Florida: Nope.
8. Tennessee: Hell no.

Finally, the Denver Nuggets won the NBA Finals last night, thus rendering a lot of bad takes about Nikola Jokic dumb as hell (I mean, they were dumb as hell before, but they’re really dumb now.)

Sports on TV

All times Central.

• 6:10 PM: MLB: Yankees at Mets (TBS)
• 7:00 PM: NHL: Panthers at Golden Knights, Game 5 (TNT)
• 9:00 PM: MLB: White Sox at Dodgers or Guardians at Padres (MLB Network)

Scoreboard

NCAA Baseball: Stanford 7, Texas 6 ... Tennessee 5, Southern Miss 0.

MLB: Tigers 6, Braves 5 ... Rockies 4, Red Sox 3 ... Giants 4, Cardinals 3 ... Angels 9, Rangers 6 ... Reds 5, Royals 4 ... Mariners 8, Marlins 1 ... Diamondbacks 9, Phillies 8 ... A’s 4, Rays 3.

NBA: Nuggets 94, Heat 89 (Nuggets win series, 4-1.)