“Secret” Scrimmage Info - Xavier Edition

[VandyBias]

Info i’ve gathered about the “secret” scrimmage held in Nashville today (10/30) against Xavier (#26 in KenPom and 32nd in the AP poll):

Liam Robbins was the only Commodore not active for the game. (Will hopefully be back before the Pitt game on the 24th of November)

Vanderbilt beat Xavier 77-65.

Scotty Pippen Jr. had 27 and Jordan Wright had 17, which accounts for over half of Vandy’s scoring.

Top three scorers for Xavier had 17, 14, and 10, meaning that Pip lead all scorers and Wright tied their highest scorer.

[MrMemorial]

What makes you think he won't be back by, for example, the VCU game a week sooner?

[VandyBias]

What makes you think he won't be back by, for example, the VCU game a week sooner?

VCU and Winthrop (the game on the 20th) both aren’t very good (and don’t really have anyone that plays who’s over 6’8”) and Stack said he won’t rush Liam back early, especially in the non-conference. Pitt game is important because it’s a power 5 team on the road and will be a great thing to pad the ncaa resume if vandy is in contention come March. If he’s feeling good Stack will probably play him then but the absolute latest I see him coming back is against SMU on Dec. 4th

[MrMemorial]

A general question. Was VCU 19-7 last season (with 3 point losses to both Purdue and uut) and Winthrop was 23-2 (and lost in the big dance to Villanova by 10)? Obviously that's no guarantee they will be good again but neither of them were hardly awful last season.

[Jason94]

A general question. Was VCU 19-7 last season (with 3 point losses to both Purdue and uut) and Winthrop was 23-2 (and lost in the big dance to Villanova by 10)? Obviously that's no guarantee they will be good again but neither of them were hardly awful last season.

FWIW - VCU is 98th and Winthrop is 155th in the kenpom preseason rankings (Vanderbilt is 79th). Last season VCU finished 48th, Winthrop 101 and Vanderbilt 104th. More interestingly, Xavier is preseason 26th after ending last season at 66th, so beating them solidly without our starting center is certainly interesting if not auspicious.

I don't follow either VCU or Winthrop closely enough to know who returns or even who was their top players. I assume if Robbins doesn't play it is because he either isn't ready or CJS thinks that we have a good chance of winning without him against those teams and would rather have a fully healthy Robbins when he is does get into live action.

[MrMemorial]

.... if Robbins doesn't play it is because he either isn't ready or CJS thinks that we have a good chance of winning without him against those teams and would rather have a fully healthy Robbins when he is does get into live action.

While I think the RPI type ratings are fairly meaningless before any teams play even a single non-exhibition game, those pesky stress fractures (if that is what it is) for tall guys can be quite a lingering issue. Nesmith isn't nearly as big and he shut down for the majority of a season over one.

[AuricGoldfinger]

VCU returns some starters, but has lost three players in the offseason to major injuries.

[4timenatlchamps]

It’s good to look after a player’s long term health so I’m not criticizing the move but those teams don’t seem bad enough (nor us good enough) for us to just assume it will just be fine if we leave out a major player.

[Jason94]

.... if Robbins doesn't play it is because he either isn't ready or CJS thinks that we have a good chance of winning without him against those teams and would rather have a fully healthy Robbins when he is does get into live action.

While I think the RPI type ratings are fairly meaningless before any teams play even a single non-exhibition game, those pesky stress fractures (if that is what it is) for tall guys can be quite a lingering issue. Nesmith isn't nearly as big and he shut down for the majority of a season over one.

I agree, though it is important to separate the RPI (which is almost worthless regardless of when you are looking at it) and analytic sites like Kenpom (which may or may not be the best, but happens to be the one that I refer to.

https://kenpom.com/blog/?s=preseason+ranking

Here is a bunch of blog posts that notes the amount of effort gone into his preseason rankings, which certainly is more than say, the RPI and is probably exceeds the amount of research done by most anyone who isn't getting paid to do this type of thing. Which is to say that while either team might be better or worse than what he projects, it probably is a reasonable starting point. For instance, in 2017 we had a preseason ranking of 64 and finished at 33, in 2018 it started at 38 and ended at 91, 2019 it went from 68 to 155, 2020 from 149 to 169, and from 126 to 104 in 2021. That is pretty good accuracy overall with the exception of 2019 where the team imploded when Garland went down (an interesting that he didn't see us as being that good even with a healthy Garland). Two of the bad years were due to CBD mismanaging the roster he had.

What is crazy is how accurate he was during the CKS years - in 2010 it started and ended at 36, went from 38 to 33 in 2011, 9 to 16 in 2012, 69 to 98 in 2013, 66 to 109 in 2014, 90 to 37 in 2015, and 20 to 25 in 2016. The big miss was in 2015 when we had a large number of impressive contributions from non-5 star true freshmen and in 2014, where we had a number of late preseason and in-season losses (Bright, Jeter, Henderson, McClellan).

[Versus75]

I had fogotten about our “secret” preseason scrimmage against Xavier until it was mentioned on the Commodore Repert last night.

Interesting speculation in this thread as to whether Liam Robbins would be ready in time for VCU game.