I MISS KEVIN!!!!

[vutrain]

I miss whiteout wins against newly crowned #1 Tennessee in sold-out Memorial. I miss 94' passes to Corey Smith and layups with 0.7 seconds left to beat Wichita State. I miss 17-6 runs led by Matt Freiji to beat No. Carolina State. I miss 20-win years, Sweet-16 appearances, and 14,000 screaming fans filling the gym.

I am tired of Vanderbilt BS, consecutive terrible losing seasons, & ticket prices being raised 100%. Add to this their silly "Show me your Covid Vaccination Card" policy, & digital tickets that take me 10-minutes to pull up on my phone, is there any reason to not understand why there are but small crowds in attendance of the games.

Last night during the Temple game, there were eight people, let me repeat that eight people in the entire 3-F section of the gym. Four of those were me, my wife, and two of our friends.

I have been a fan since 1961 and a season ticket holder for over 35 years, Vandy men's basketball is no fun any longer.

Most of all I miss WINNING.

[MrMemorial]

I miss whiteout wins against newly crowned #1 Tennessee in sold-out Memorial. I miss 94' passes to Corey Smith and layups with 0.7 seconds left to beat Wichita State. I miss 17-6 runs led by Matt Freiji to beat No. Carolina State. I miss 20-win years, Sweet-16 appearances, and 14,000 screaming fans filling the gym.

I am tired of Vanderbilt BS, consecutive terrible losing seasons, & ticket prices being raised 100%. Add to this their silly "Show me your Covid Vaccination Card" policy, & digital tickets that take me 10-minutes to pull up on my phone, is there any reason to not understand why there are but small crowds in attendance of the games.

Last night during the Temple game, there were eight people, let me repeat that eight people in the entire 3-F section of the gym. Four of those were me, my wife, and two of our friends.

I have been a fan since 1961 and a season ticket holder for over 35 years, Vandy men's basketball is no fun any longer.

Most of all I miss WINNING.

Things I approve of:
Paper tickets as an option
Lots of wins/fans
Possibly closing 3F and 3L (eventually)
Chairback seats and A/C (eventually) in the gym
The covid policy since it's a life & death matter
The 2022 recruiting class (maybe the best in school history)

Things I don't approve of:
$40 for a single game non-conference ticket in 1F / 1L
No option for paper tickets
Losing games that are (or should be) winnable. (lots of other teams seem to be doing it too)
Dropping f-bombs and threatening to kill the best player on live national TV
20 game losing streaks resulting in worst SEC record in 70 years

[WDMDore]

The saddest thing about last night's game is that there was a time when we had raucous crowds that would energize the team, pressure the opponent, and help the team win. That three by Pippen would have caused the old cinder blocks to shake back when we actually had fans. Now we don't have crowds or hope because of societal trends and years of the program languishing.

[Doreknox]

The thread subject alone will trigger apoplectic seizures in MrMemorial.

[Go Vandy!]

I realize i am the only Vandy fan who thinks 2 Sweet 16s and 1 SECT championship in 17 seasons is NOT the best we can ever hope for. Compared to the last 5+ seasons, that would be SWEET! But very few college fanbases who have experienced any degree of success would accept that as the ultimate.

[geeznotagain]

[
Things I don't approve of:
$40 for a single game non-conference ticket in 1F / 1L
No option for paper tickets
Losing games that are (or should be) winnable. (lots of other teams seem to be doing it too)
Dropping f-bombs and threatening to kill the best player on live national TV
20 game losing streaks resulting in worst SEC record in 70 years

You forgot the Atlanta Braves.

[alathIN]

I realize i am the only Vandy fan who thinks 2 Sweet 16s and 1 SECT championship in 17 seasons is NOT the best we can ever hope for. Compared to the last 5+ seasons, that would be SWEET! But very few college fanbases who have experienced any degree of success would accept that as the ultimate.

At the time, the fire Stallings crowd was saying we should not be satisfied with being a mid-tier team that occasionally has moderately good seasons, and instead choose epic greatness.

At the time, my thought was that of all the newly hired college basketball coaches, more of them are worse than the mean and get fired than are consistently better than the mean, and the assumption that our next hire would automatically be markedly better than Stallings was actually kind of a long shot.

CKS was always a good Xs/Os game coach and was able to develop players, but his old school style was already a barrier to recruiting and would become more and more of a liability.
I don't think anyone regarded Stallings as THE ULTIMATE. Most fans regarded him as a moderately good coach whose act was wearing a little thin.

Drew immediately improved recruiting, and Stackhouse has gradually done so. Drew was clearly not a good game day tactician, while the jury is still out on Stackhouse.

It would be nice to be an occasionally moderately successful mid-tier team so we can have that debate about accepting moderate success vs risking multiple years of epic bad suckage in hopes of great success again, instead of being stuck in a a multiyear era of epic bad suckage and debating whether our basketball coach can actually coach basketball or not.

[Jason94]

I realize i am the only Vandy fan who thinks 2 Sweet 16s and 1 SECT championship in 17 seasons is NOT the best we can ever hope for. Compared to the last 5+ seasons, that would be SWEET! But very few college fanbases who have experienced any degree of success would accept that as the ultimate.

At the time, the fire Stallings crowd was saying we should not be satisfied with being a mid-tier team that occasionally has moderately good seasons, and instead choose epic greatness.

At the time, my thought was that of all the newly hired college basketball coaches, more of them are worse than the mean and get fired than are consistently better than the mean, and the assumption that our next hire would automatically be markedly better than Stallings was actually kind of a long shot.

CKS was always a good Xs/Os game coach and was able to develop players, but his old school style was already a barrier to recruiting and would become more and more of a liability.
I don't think anyone regarded Stallings as THE ULTIMATE. Most fans regarded him as a moderately good coach whose act was wearing a little thin.

Drew immediately improved recruiting, and Stackhouse has gradually done so. Drew was clearly not a good game day tactician, while the jury is still out on Stackhouse.

It would be nice to be an occasionally moderately successful mid-tier team so we can have that debate about accepting moderate success vs risking multiple years of epic bad suckage in hopes of great success again, instead of being stuck in a a multiyear era of epic bad suckage and debating whether our basketball coach can actually coach basketball or not.

Pretty much this, though it was time for CKS to move on, it was no guarantee that his replacement would do better. I just didn't think that we would do so much worse where our BB program is really no better than our FB program at the moment. I just don't understand the entire "CKS and CEF were flawed, so therefore recent losses are acceptable." line of thinking. CJS may end up being good, but he certainly hasn't proven so, and right now the only thing that is saving his position beyond this year is an excellent recruiting class. There has been some bad luck to be sure, but every coach has had bad luck and he doesn't have much on the positive side of the ledger to offset the negative.

[mathguy]

I realize i am the only Vandy fan who thinks 2 Sweet 16s and 1 SECT championship in 17 seasons is NOT the best we can ever hope for. Compared to the last 5+ seasons, that would be SWEET! But very few college fanbases who have experienced any degree of success would accept that as the ultimate.

At the time, the fire Stallings crowd was saying we should not be satisfied with being a mid-tier team that occasionally has moderately good seasons, and instead choose epic greatness.

At the time, my thought was that of all the newly hired college basketball coaches, more of them are worse than the mean and get fired than are consistently better than the mean, and the assumption that our next hire would automatically be markedly better than Stallings was actually kind of a long shot.

CKS was always a good Xs/Os game coach and was able to develop players, but his old school style was already a barrier to recruiting and would become more and more of a liability.
I don't think anyone regarded Stallings as THE ULTIMATE. Most fans regarded him as a moderately good coach whose act was wearing a little thin.

At the time I *absolutely* believe that Stallings could take us to a final four or a national title ... until I didn't anymore. The "2 sweet 16s in 17 years" is accurate, but shallow logic. Stallings took over a program with some level of disarray and took a while to rebuild it. 3 or 4 years into his tenure, I wasn't sure we had the right guy.

Then he had a stretch of 9 years that includes 2 sweet 16s, an SECT championship, 8 20-win seasons, 6 NCAAs, and 6 season where we were nationally ranked. I absolutely believed the Foster/Byars team beat Georgetown and know I read somewhere that Stallings admitted he thought we would've beaten UNC in the elite 8 if not for the non-traveling call. I absolutely believe the Taylor/Ezeli/Jenkins/Tinsley/Golbourne/Tchiengang team had final four potential ... but dealt with injuries to Ezeli all year and got pretty well jobbed by refs against Wisconsin.

After that, there was a stretch of years where things didn't go our way (the Kedren Johnson debacle, the McClellan shoplifting incident, Sheldon Jeter's blindside transfer, Kevin Bright's sick mom, Damian Jones' maddening inconsistency) and that stretch of 9 years kept me thinking that we were really *that close* and that we could win with Stallings.

And then, his last season convinced me that he wasn't there any more. We had two obvious future NBA players ... plus Luke! ... were ranked in the preseason, with pundits hinting we had a chance to be better than adverstized. We sat through the transfers and bad luck specifically waiting for Stallings to build that team ... and we stunk. We somehow made the NCAAs ... bu we didn't deserve to. Thinking we were on the bubble we lost our reg season finale, choked away a would be win against UT in the SECT, and then sleepwalked through a blowout loss in the "First Four" of the NCAAs. We lost every important non-conference game we played. We underachieved and for maybe the first time in the CKS era fielded a team that was clearly and obviously less than the sum of its parts.

So yeah, when CKS left, it was time to go. But his defenders were not of the opinion that "2 sweet 16s in 17 years is the best Vandy can do". We were of the opinion that we had a guy that made 2 sweet 16s in 9 years, had probably 3 to 5 more teams with sweet 16 potential that unfortunately lost and believed we had a guy who could give us more chances at more deep runs ... until it eventually became clear that he wasn't that guy anymore.

[commadore]

I realize i am the only Vandy fan who thinks 2 Sweet 16s and 1 SECT championship in 17 seasons is NOT the best we can ever hope for. Compared to the last 5+ seasons, that would be SWEET! But very few college fanbases who have experienced any degree of success would accept that as the ultimate.

At the time, the fire Stallings crowd was saying we should not be satisfied with being a mid-tier team that occasionally has moderately good seasons, and instead choose epic greatness.

At the time, my thought was that of all the newly hired college basketball coaches, more of them are worse than the mean and get fired than are consistently better than the mean, and the assumption that our next hire would automatically be markedly better than Stallings was actually kind of a long shot.

CKS was always a good Xs/Os game coach and was able to develop players, but his old school style was already a barrier to recruiting and would become more and more of a liability.
I don't think anyone regarded Stallings as THE ULTIMATE. Most fans regarded him as a moderately good coach whose act was wearing a little thin.

Drew immediately improved recruiting, and Stackhouse has gradually done so. Drew was clearly not a good game day tactician, while the jury is still out on Stackhouse.

It would be nice to be an occasionally moderately successful mid-tier team so we can have that debate about accepting moderate success vs risking multiple years of epic bad suckage in hopes of great success again, instead of being stuck in a a multiyear era of epic bad suckage and debating whether our basketball coach can actually coach basketball or not.

Pretty much this, though it was time for CKS to move on, it was no guarantee that his replacement would do better. I just didn't think that we would do so much worse where our BB program is really no better than our FB program at the moment. I just don't understand the entire "CKS and CEF were flawed, so therefore recent losses are acceptable." line of thinking. CJS may end up being good, but he certainly hasn't proven so, and right now the only thing that is saving his position beyond this year is an excellent recruiting class. There has been some bad luck to be sure, but every coach has had bad luck and he doesn't have much on the positive side of the ledger to offset the negative.

At least CJS doesn't say "we would have won if we had Robbins and Chapman" after every loss like the previous one. Got that going for him.