Florida Win and Tournament hopes

[Jason94]

That was a really great win - probably more impressive than the UT win - we won going away at Gainsville and put up an excellent offensive performance against a very good defensive team.

Robbins has been so good since about the 6th game of the season. It is not a coincidence that his minutes going way up have coincided with our little win streak. He has developed into a center that nobody can really guard. Outside of the Bama game where he was coming off of the injury, his lowest point total has been 14 points in SEC play and this is while only going over 30 minutes once in this span. He has been great on the boards and leads the league in blocked shots by a wide margin and is 2nd nationally behind the 7'-5" player from WKU. He is also leading the league in possessions, and fouls drawn in league play. This while cutting his TO rate about in half from last season. We might be able to ride Robbins right into the tournament at this rate.

I've been hard on Thomas, but it was great to see him hit his open shots. When he shoots like that it almost doesn't matter how bad his defense is, and it was nice finally see shots he should be making go down. Since Manjon and Lawrence played a lot of minutes, it appears that Thomas is now taking time from Wright, who only played 19 minutes today. When he shoots like that, it pays off. Glad to see it in a big road win. It has been noted that he is not turning the ball over, but it should be noted that pretty much nobody is. For some reason, we went from a team that turned the ball over 19 times against Grambling State to a team that has only 20 TO's in the last 3 games combined. There is nothing that spectacular about our offense in SEC play except we've suddenly become allergic to turnovers.

As for our tournament chances, UF and UT were massive in terms of getting tier 1 quality wins. The only one left out there is at UK, so winning those games allow us to have a number of feathers in our cap and give us the elusive quality road win we've been looking for. The two games to look out for are at USC and at LSU. Both teams are not good (they are a combined 3-20 in conference), but the games are on the road. Losing to LSU wouldn't be the worst thing but losing to USC would be a bad loss. Besides needing wins we also need to avoid losses to teams outside of the top 100. Though we are only favored against USC, we will not likely be heavy dogs against any of our remaining opponents. Both Auburn and UK will have difficulty defending a healthy Robbins, and the UK game will probably look a lot different than the one that occured at memorial.

4-2 down the stretch would leave us at 17-14, which probably is not enough to make the tournament barring a run to Sunday (3 wins) including wins against Bama or UT and even then we would be on the bubble at 20-15. 6-0 would put us at 19-12, and avoiding a 1st round loss would be a finish at 20-13, which probably gets us in the tournament. 5-1 would probably depend on who the loss was to. A loss at UK and 1 win in the tournament would probably have us in the tournament I would guess, as 19-14 with a strong SOS probably gets us at least in the play in game or as a #10 seed, but I wouldn't want to leave it up to the committee.

Beating Grambling St. and Southern Miss at home would have had us at 15-10 right now and 4-2 down the stretch (very doable) would have us likely in the tournament. 5-1 would have us looking at a 6 or 7 seed. Looking at how we are playing now we would beat each team on a neutral court by double digits, and would probably put up 90 on Grambling St.

[Obvious]

If we go 4-2 down the stretch, the wins would have to include Kentucky at rupp and auburn next Saturday. I believe we are good enough to win all 6 final games but that would put us on 9 game win streak. Winning 9 straight in a tough conference down the home stretch isn’t very likely. I think the safest number is winning 5 more games in the regular season and at minimum 2 conference tournament games. We do have decent depth to make a run in the conference tournament. Today Collin smith stepped up big time. We will need more surprise contributions to get to the big dance. We do have Liam Robbins who I think is the key player for us and the other team. I don’t know how else to say it, this kid is very good at basketball. He’s very big, very strong, and can’t shoot over the opponents. And he makes his free throws. I don’t want to waste his talent and not go to the dance.

[VandyDores15]

I’d say 7 wins may do it through SEC tourney, any losses can’t be to South Carolina or LSU. As impressive as we’ve been this week, our margin is still razor thin. 5-3 our last 8 would be a solid performance and I think we wouldn’t sniff NCAA.

[dore74]

Are we a 6-6 middle of the road SEC team with some good wins and bad losses that is on a bit of a win streak. Or are we a tough, increasingly deep, team making a late move that can impose its will into the NCAA’s?
At the beginning of the season I’d have hoped we were the former. Can we actually be the latter?
As noted we cant make any missteps or take anyone lightly. Nevertheless, Vandy hoops haven’t been this much fun in a long, long time—thanks coaches and players. Go get ‘um!!

[commadore]

If we go 4-2 down the stretch, the wins would have to include Kentucky at rupp and auburn next Saturday. I believe we are good enough to win all 6 final games but that would put us on 9 game win streak. Winning 9 straight in a tough conference down the home stretch isn’t very likely. I think the safest number is winning 5 more games in the regular season and at minimum 2 conference tournament games. We do have decent depth to make a run in the conference tournament. Today Collin smith stepped up big time. We will need more surprise contributions to get to the big dance. We do have Liam Robbins who I think is the key player for us and the other team. I don’t know how else to say it, this kid is very good at basketball. He’s very big, very strong, and can shoot over the opponents. And he makes his free throws. I don’t want to waste his talent and not go to the dance.

There. Fixed if for you.

[mathguy]

Nice just to be able to speculate. The SEC we supposed to be super strong at the beginning of the year ... I feel like its been a litle underwhelming compared to those prediction. Finishing 10-8 in the SEC would require a big tourney run ... and the committee has proven year after year after year that they pay virtually no attention to the SEC Tourney. So I think we need to finish 5-1 minimum, unless we plan on winning the entire tourney.

On the flip side, you look at our schedule ... there aren't any games left that we just can't win. Auburn and UK are tough but ... neither team is exactly scary.

[memphisVUalum]

Are we a 6-6 middle of the road SEC team with some good wins and bad losses that is on a bit of a win streak. Or are we a tough, increasingly deep, team making a late move that can impose its will into the NCAA’s?
At the beginning of the season I’d have hoped we were the former. Can we actually be the latter?
As noted we cant make any missteps or take anyone lightly. Nevertheless, Vandy hoops haven’t been this much fun in a long, long time—thanks coaches and players. Go get ‘um!!

Hope we keep the players healthy who have returned from injury and that Dort finds his fracture healed in a couple of weeks although that puts him behind from where he had been.

I had a thought unrelated to the thread really to look at how hard it is to win in Gainesville. How have we done historically there? I had always thought playing at UF was historically considered a difficult place to play. As I look it up https://floridagators.com/sports/mens-b ... versity/90, this is what I think may be the case:

- Stackhouse wins in his fourth year at Gainesville.
- Drew won in his first year by two points at Gainesville, then lost twice at Gainesville. His final record v. UF was 3-3.
- Stallings won at UF in his final year. In total, I count 3 wins and 13 losses at Gainesville unless I miscounted. Tough place to play. Over his VU career, I think he went 11-23 against UF, including at home and on neutral courts. His tenure coincided with much of Billy Donovan's period at Florida however. Donovan won the national championship twice.
- Van Breda Kolff won once at UF, in Feb. 1997. His record was 1 win, 5 losses at Gainesville. Over all, he finished 6-6 against UF, after starting out with 1 win and 4 losses against them.
- Fogler went 2-2 at UF, finishing 7-2 v. UF - likely one of the few to have a winning record against them. He started out 5-0 against UF teams.
- C.M. Newton went 1-7 at Gainesville. Over all he won 8 and lost 9 v. UF.
- R. Schmidt: 2-0 at UF; 4-1 over all. Unusual winning record against UF.
- Wayne Dobbs: 1-2 at UF; 3-3 over all against UF.
- R. Skinner: 5-7 at Gainesville; 15-10 over all against UF.

That's as far back as I have time to look and does not include Skinner's year in the past as "acting coach" in 1958-59 but I am not sure we played UF that year anyway.

[Jason94]

Are we a 6-6 middle of the road SEC team with some good wins and bad losses that is on a bit of a win streak. Or are we a tough, increasingly deep, team making a late move that can impose its will into the NCAA’s?
At the beginning of the season I’d have hoped we were the former. Can we actually be the latter?
As noted we cant make any missteps or take anyone lightly. Nevertheless, Vandy hoops haven’t been this much fun in a long, long time—thanks coaches and players. Go get ‘um!!

Hope we keep the players healthy who have returned from injury and that Dort finds his fracture healed in a couple of weeks although that puts him behind from where he had been.

I had a thought unrelated to the thread really to look at how hard it is to win in Gainesville. How have we done historically there? I had always thought playing at UF was historically considered a difficult place to play. As I look it up https://floridagators.com/sports/mens-b ... versity/90, this is what I think may be the case:

- Stackhouse wins in his fourth year at Gainesville.
- Drew won in his first year by two points at Gainesville, then lost twice at Gainesville. His final record v. UF was 3-3.
- Stallings won at UF in his final year. In total, I count 3 wins and 13 losses at Gainesville unless I miscounted. Tough place to play. Over his VU career, I think he went 11-23 against UF, including at home and on neutral courts. His tenure coincided with much of Billy Donovan's period at Florida however. Donovan won the national championship twice.
- Van Breda Kolff won once at UF, in Feb. 1997. His record was 1 win, 5 losses at Gainesville. Over all, he finished 6-6 against UF, after starting out with 1 win and 4 losses against them.
- Fogler went 2-2 at UF, finishing 7-2 v. UF - likely one of the few to have a winning record against them. He started out 5-0 against UF teams.
- C.M. Newton went 1-7 at Gainesville. Over all he won 8 and lost 9 v. UF.
- R. Schmidt: 2-0 at UF; 4-1 over all. Unusual winning record against UF.
- Wayne Dobbs: 1-2 at UF; 3-3 over all against UF.
- R. Skinner: 5-7 at Gainesville; 15-10 over all against UF.

That's as far back as I have time to look and does not include Skinner's year in the past as "acting coach" in 1958-59 but I am not sure we played UF that year anyway.

Fogler should have been 3-1 at UF had the Refs actually called a 4 step walk on Stacy Poole.

[KudzuLeague]

I don't think we have a great shot at the NCAA tournament, but I do think that the tone of the chatter on this site is a whole lot more positive today than it was 3 games ago. Very pleased to see the Dores playing well. It has been a few years, honestly!

[cc11316]

Interesting how much a great week of games makes a difference. I started a thread last week at this time about "What is the ceiling now?" I think the consensus was NIT but even that is unlikely looking at the next 8 games (6 now). I think these last 2 games definitely made the NIT a much more realistic goal but unless they go 5-1 and make a deep tourney run, the NCAA seems a pipe dream. This week was very enjoyable though and makes me excited about this week.

[Obvious]

Interesting how much a great week of games makes a difference. I started a thread last week at this time about "What is the ceiling now?" I think the consensus was NIT but even that is unlikely looking at the next 8 games (6 now). I think these last 2 games definitely made the NIT a much more realistic goal but unless they go 5-1 and make a deep tourney run, the NCAA seems a pipe dream. This week was very enjoyable though and makes me excited about this week.

I’ve seen some special Vanderbilt teams in the past. Teams get hot every year so maybe we can get in on that. Not saying we’re a special team yet, but we are a very enjoyable team to watch.

Pippen jr was our best player since maybe Nesmith*(could have been a great one for us) and I appreciate his career here. however, I like this years team much more. They play more together and are becoming one of the more disciplined Vandy teams in recent memory. It appears we might not have enough to get to the tournament but we’re not dead yet. It’s up to the team to get in.