30 seconds

[roanoke]

I did not think the game, for the most part, was horribly officiated last night. Kentucky plays decent defense without planned muggings like SC and Bama. I respect their team’s talent. They are very good.

When we are healthy - this group of Vandy players is not far from their talent plane. This could have been a very special season but for injuries.

Having said this, the nature of officiating is power. And you can decide a game in 30 seconds of poor/terrible performance. The terrible missed call with 18 seconds left, I don’t understand. How can you not fix that? How do you not see it?

But the key 30 seconds was a sequence when SPJ went to the hoop, clearly got fouled - no call & foul on QMB going for rebound. Next trip, Chatman goes up from 3 and is hammered - does he jump in a little, yes - but it doesn’t affect the contact & that gets called 99% of the time. Not only are we denied 3 charity shots, but UK comes down (after the 30 second buzzer goes off) for a free bucket. CJS gets T’d up - because he knows in those 2 sequences the refs gave UK 7 points, now 9 points. We lost by 6.

Reffing is a hard job. The news will report UK’s decisive 15-1 run sealed the game. That 9-0 portion of that run was a zebra gift.

I’m not saying UK wouldn’t have found a way to win anyway. They are very good and our legs were clearly an issue playing 3 games in 3 days. Similarly, although we only got 10 foul shots, I didn’t think the officiating was terribly one sided most of the time - it was a “let ‘em play” night: but when key controversial plays came, they sure didn’t go our way.

We have an NCAA tourney caliber team. Hope we make a nice NIT run.

[Versus75]

… of the first half. Instead of calling timeout to set up a final shot to go up by one we allow a steal, layup, foul, free throw and are down by 4.

~~~

One thing I give Calipari credit for is calling timeout BEFORE squandering a lead. In the second half we cut the UK lead from 7 to 1 at about the 7-minute and mark. He called time and KY scored the next 8 points to stretch the lead.

[alathIN]

Agree with Roanoke (as usual)

Re Versus75 - yes, that was an unfortunate stretch. That is the nature of playing elite teams - if you have just a moment's lapse they will make you pay a disproportionate price. Our program isn't there yet - but it's clearly much improved and I would in no way say that sequence casts a pall on this SEC tournament performance.

This was a very good SEC tourney appearance for this team and somewhat redeeming of a season full of hardships and disappointments.
Crushed UGA - yeah, I know they're not very good but how many times in the past has Vanderbilt gone in to the SEC tournament and lost to a lower seed in our first game? More than I care to remember. And it wasn't "barely squeaked out a win over bad team" - it was a dominating performance.
Then beat a very talented and athletic Alabama team who will be going to the NCAAs.
Then a very creditable battle against a top 5 team with elite talent - and them being totally fresh versus Vanderbilt playing 3 games in 3 days.

And, yes, the injury bug again bites Vanderbilt very hard. Yeah, everyone has injuries. But we've had some brutal injury-plagued years, this among the worst. It's obvious that with Chatman and Robbins, and to a lesser extent Mann, this is a totally different team. It's not at all delusional to speculate about a healthy version of this team coming in with a better seed and fresh legs and winning this tournament.

Even with that, I am hoping we see an NIT bid. I think this team is capable of a run in the NIT.
Disappointing compared to what might have been, but from the overall trajectory of this program from 0-fer to an NIT run would be definitive proof of progress.

[dcdore]

And no one has mentioned the impact of having Trey Thomas available might have had.