Good Bye NCAA Maybe NIT What a bad performance

[janvandy66]

We needed to win this on to stay on track for maybe a NCAA bid but now that is all gone. The only way now is to win the SEC tournment and after this game I don't see it.

[VUaskew]

Was it really that bad, or was it more that LSU got their heads out of their rear ends?

We could have shot FT's better, and we could have rebounded better, but the disparity was not ridiculous. Sometimes teams have a better game. Remember, we stole a couple from UT and Auburn that way.

NCAA was a pipe dream. What I want is to see improvement from year-to-year. I think we are getting that, unless we fold in the last three league games. Even then, we finish 8-10 in the league.

I wonder what can be accomplished with a full set of SEC-level players on the roster.

[docdore]

Was it really that bad, or was it more that LSU got their heads out of their rear ends?

We could have shot FT's better, and we could have rebounded better, but the disparity was not ridiculous. Sometimes teams have a better game. Remember, we stole a couple from UT and Auburn that way.

NCAA was a pipe dream. What I want is to see improvement from year-to-year. I think we are getting that, unless we fold in the last three league games. Even then, we finish 8-10 in the league.

I wonder what can be accomplished with a full set of SEC-level players on the roster.

and when do we think that will be?

[utahozzie]

Curious to see if the guys mail it in now…hope not but it’s gonna take winning out to get in. Not sure it can be done

[VandyDores15]

Bigger question is, can we get an NCAA caliber roster by start of next season? It needs some serious work without Robbins. Even with Robbins this season, the group was not really that close to tourney (barring a miracle run). I know guys will improve through summer but also risk some leave.

[doubledore9603]

I’ll say they come back stronger from this. Time and again, this team has shown a tremendous level of character after tough losses.
LSU won based upon better shooting and more evident hunger from all players.
CJS will have our guys back to work tomorrow…full confidence in them on Saturday.

Curious to see if the guys mail it in now…hope not but it’s gonna take winning out to get in. Not sure it can be done

[Nashmann]

I should have expected this...actually it was in the back of my mind they wouldn't play well enough to win. I mean when the line changed to where we were favored I had a sick feeling.

[docdore]

Curious to see if the guys mail it in now…hope not but it’s gonna take winning out to get in. Not sure it can be done

they won’t mail it in. winning at rupp is more likely than that.

[charlestonalum]

Both teams were due: LSU playing with nothing to lose and with lots of lucky shots at home having fun and we were pressurized having to win against a relaxed team - this is how UK lost at home to SC. These are not robots - our team is quite able to produce a Grambling game - fortunately not often of late. I Expect better performance to the finish.

[underdog74]

If you didn't see this coming, you haven't been following Vandy basketball very long.

[VUgearhead]

Well......that was a colossal setback.

It will take an equally colossal effort to make up for it.

I hope the boys are up to it.

[dorelover82]

I happened to be listening to the LSU broadcast on 870 am last night, and was suprised to hear early in the broadcast the announcers saying how overconfident the team (Vandy) acted during shoot around and pre-game. the two announcers were agreeing that they where laughing, joking and not acting like a team with the big game ahead. In fact, their most important game in over 5 years. When these comments were being made the score was 23-21 LSU. They turned out to be prophetic.

[dorelover82]

I happened to be listening to the LSU broadcast on 870 am last night, and was suprised to hear early in the broadcast the announcers saying how overconfident the team (Vandy) acted during shoot around and pre-game. the two announcers were agreeing that they where laughing, joking and not acting like a team with the big game ahead. In fact, their most important game in over 5 years. When these comments were being made the score was 23-21 LSU. They turned out to be prophetic.

[alathIN]

Bigger question is, can we get an NCAA caliber roster by start of next season? It needs some serious work without Robbins. Even with Robbins this season, the group was not really that close to tourney (barring a miracle run). I know guys will improve through summer but also risk some leave.

Pure speculation, but if Robbins doesn't miss three weeks with injury an NCAA bid might be a lot closer right now.
Maybe.
Something seemed to click for him and the rest of the team after the Alabama blowout. Maybe they still would not have clicked until that time anyway.

I don't see next year's roster as automatically worse than this year. Healthy Dort with an off season to absorb his first college year and working on his game is an exciting thought. Dia with some work on his D and adding some strength could also be a breakout player. Yes losing Robbins will be big but I don't think he's irreplaceable.

Right now we appear likely to improve on last year's record. Who would have thought that would happen after losing Chatman and SPJ?

Sometimes I think basketball seems like it's all about how good the two best players in the rotation are.
But sometimes it's more about how bad are the worst two players in your rotation.

[Jason94]

Bigger question is, can we get an NCAA caliber roster by start of next season? It needs some serious work without Robbins. Even with Robbins this season, the group was not really that close to tourney (barring a miracle run). I know guys will improve through summer but also risk some leave.

Pure speculation, but if Robbins doesn't miss three weeks with injury an NCAA bid might be a lot closer right now.
Maybe.
Something seemed to click for him and the rest of the team after the Alabama blowout. Maybe they still would not have clicked until that time anyway.

I don't see next year's roster as automatically worse than this year. Healthy Dort with an off season to absorb his first college year and working on his game is an exciting thought. Dia with some work on his D and adding some strength could also be a breakout player. Yes losing Robbins will be big but I don't think he's irreplaceable.

Right now we appear likely to improve on last year's record. Who would have thought that would happen after losing Chatman and SPJ?

Sometimes I think basketball seems like it's all about how good the two best players in the rotation are.
But sometimes it's more about how bad are the worst two players in your rotation.

Had we had Pippen with this version of Robbins we would have been a tournament team for sure. But I disagree that Robbins figured something out just after he returned. He actually was our best player after the first two games, but this was masked a bit by the fact that he wasn't really starting or playing very many minutes. Starting with Temple until he was injured Robbins only scored fewer than 10 points in two starts, both of them blowouts where he played 17 and 12 minutes respectively. His 4 SEC games prior to his injury he scored 70 points in 94 minutes, or 17.5 ppg in 23.5 mpg. Had he been playing the 29 mpg he played once he returned from the injury and kept at the same level of production, he would have scored almost 22 ppg.

And I did think we could improve on last season's record because Robbins and Chatman missed so much of the season, and it was clear at the end of the year when they were both healthy that we were a much better team with the two of them. As we were really only losing Pippen and Chatman and returning with a far stronger post situation (remember that for most of last season we had to play Mann and Frank significant minutes due to having only QMB and Stute healthy at the post (to your point about the quality of the end of the rotation). Manjon was a reasonable replacement at PG and with more players returning than CJS had benefitted from previously plus the addition of a top 25 rated recruiting class, it was not a stretch to say that we would be better and a potential tournament team. I did not think that Robbins would improve as much as he did, but his improvement was somewhat mitigated by QMB's backslide.

Robbins' improvement and dominance took a ton of pressure off of every other player, as he started taking a ton of possessions in a very efficient manner, essentially replacing all of Pippen's offensive production while providing a strong rebounder and dominating shot blocker. He also became a magnet for fouls, replacing that aspect of Pippen's offense that had such a magnified effect while hitting his FT's at about the same rate as Pippen. Technically nobody is irreplaceable, in that you are going to have to replace that player eventually, but his production and efficiency will be even more difficult to replicate than Pippen's was.

My concern about the freshmen having breakout seasons was that they were not relied upon to play much at all except for Smith. None played so much as Festus Ezeli did in 2010, behind AJ Ogilvy as a junior, when Festus played in 32 of 33 games and averaged 12 mpg. Nor did they play as much as Jermaine Beal, who averaged 16 mpg as a freshman playing behind SR. Red Gordon. Kedron Johnson played 14 mpg, Luke about 15 mpg. I cannot think of a single player over the last 20 seasons who didn't play at least a consistent rotation role prior to breaking out. I'm sure those exist, but they would seem to be exceedingly rare. Dia has only played in 15 games this season and just 5 conference games. Dort even prior to his injury had missed 5 of his first 17 games, and played fewer than 5 minutes in another of the 5 games he did get into. Meaning of the 17 games he played, he only got rotation minutes in 7 of them. And double digit minutes in just 2 games. Shelby has only played in half of the games so far, and played fewer than 8 minutes in 6 of the 14 games he has played in. He did have a stretch where he was in the rotation for about 7 games but has just played in 4 of the last 10 games for a grand total of 19 minutes.

Lewis and Smith are the only two freshmen who have had rotation minutes - and both were playing like 5th options - deferring offensively to other players. Smith could be a breakout player in the way that Stute broke out - becomes more confident with his three point shot. I didn't see any suggestion that he would suddenly come close to being a double digit scorer as he doesn't appear to bring much to the table that Stute doesn't. Lewis is also difficult to read because he did have a number of injuries and Manjon has been healthy. But there wasn't anything impressive about his numbers.

One thing about the break out players is that they will typically play at least 35% of the team's minutes, and often times will play over 50% (barring injury). Only Smith really fits the category of potential breakout players for next season. Maybe they will surprise, but the person determining the playing time was CJS, and it wasn't like they were being kept from more minutes by studs. A lot of minutes went to QMB, Ansong, Thomas, who are not bad players, but certainly are not players who keep future stars on the bench.

Now I do think that Dort is tremendously talented and can break out at some point. My point is that he is also likely raw enough that CJS kept him out of the game a lot, and that there will be inevitable struggles once he starts to get regular playing time and teams actually start to game plan against him. Too many of our freshmen didn't play enough for teams to actually have a plan against what they like to do. Seems like that typically needs to happen for a bit before a player can break out (unless they are crazy talented).

[alathIN]

Bigger question is, can we get an NCAA caliber roster by start of next season? It needs some serious work without Robbins. Even with Robbins this season, the group was not really that close to tourney (barring a miracle run). I know guys will improve through summer but also risk some leave.

Pure speculation, but if Robbins doesn't miss three weeks with injury an NCAA bid might be a lot closer right now.
Maybe.
Something seemed to click for him and the rest of the team after the Alabama blowout. Maybe they still would not have clicked until that time anyway.

I don't see next year's roster as automatically worse than this year. Healthy Dort with an off season to absorb his first college year and working on his game is an exciting thought. Dia with some work on his D and adding some strength could also be a breakout player. Yes losing Robbins will be big but I don't think he's irreplaceable.

Right now we appear likely to improve on last year's record. Who would have thought that would happen after losing Chatman and SPJ?

Sometimes I think basketball seems like it's all about how good the two best players in the rotation are.
But sometimes it's more about how bad are the worst two players in your rotation.

Had we had Pippen with this version of Robbins we would have been a tournament team for sure. But I disagree that Robbins figured something out just after he returned. He actually was our best player after the first two games, but this was masked a bit by the fact that he wasn't really starting or playing very many minutes. Starting with Temple until he was injured Robbins only scored fewer than 10 points in two starts, both of them blowouts where he played 17 and 12 minutes respectively. His 4 SEC games prior to his injury he scored 70 points in 94 minutes, or 17.5 ppg in 23.5 mpg. Had he been playing the 29 mpg he played once he returned from the injury and kept at the same level of production, he would have scored almost 22 ppg.

And I did think we could improve on last season's record because Robbins and Chatman missed so much of the season, and it was clear at the end of the year when they were both healthy that we were a much better team with the two of them. As we were really only losing Pippen and Chatman and returning with a far stronger post situation (remember that for most of last season we had to play Mann and Frank significant minutes due to having only QMB and Stute healthy at the post (to your point about the quality of the end of the rotation). Manjon was a reasonable replacement at PG and with more players returning than CJS had benefitted from previously plus the addition of a top 25 rated recruiting class, it was not a stretch to say that we would be better and a potential tournament team. I did not think that Robbins would improve as much as he did, but his improvement was somewhat mitigated by QMB's backslide.

Robbins' improvement and dominance took a ton of pressure off of every other player, as he started taking a ton of possessions in a very efficient manner, essentially replacing all of Pippen's offensive production while providing a strong rebounder and dominating shot blocker. He also became a magnet for fouls, replacing that aspect of Pippen's offense that had such a magnified effect while hitting his FT's at about the same rate as Pippen. Technically nobody is irreplaceable, in that you are going to have to replace that player eventually, but his production and efficiency will be even more difficult to replicate than Pippen's was.

My concern about the freshmen having breakout seasons was that they were not relied upon to play much at all except for Smith. None played so much as Festus Ezeli did in 2010, behind AJ Ogilvy as a junior, when Festus played in 32 of 33 games and averaged 12 mpg. Nor did they play as much as Jermaine Beal, who averaged 16 mpg as a freshman playing behind SR. Red Gordon. Kedron Johnson played 14 mpg, Luke about 15 mpg. I cannot think of a single player over the last 20 seasons who didn't play at least a consistent rotation role prior to breaking out. I'm sure those exist, but they would seem to be exceedingly rare. Dia has only played in 15 games this season and just 5 conference games. Dort even prior to his injury had missed 5 of his first 17 games, and played fewer than 5 minutes in another of the 5 games he did get into. Meaning of the 17 games he played, he only got rotation minutes in 7 of them. And double digit minutes in just 2 games. Shelby has only played in half of the games so far, and played fewer than 8 minutes in 6 of the 14 games he has played in. He did have a stretch where he was in the rotation for about 7 games but has just played in 4 of the last 10 games for a grand total of 19 minutes.

Lewis and Smith are the only two freshmen who have had rotation minutes - and both were playing like 5th options - deferring offensively to other players. Smith could be a breakout player in the way that Stute broke out - becomes more confident with his three point shot. I didn't see any suggestion that he would suddenly come close to being a double digit scorer as he doesn't appear to bring much to the table that Stute doesn't. Lewis is also difficult to read because he did have a number of injuries and Manjon has been healthy. But there wasn't anything impressive about his numbers.

One thing about the break out players is that they will typically play at least 35% of the team's minutes, and often times will play over 50% (barring injury). Only Smith really fits the category of potential breakout players for next season. Maybe they will surprise, but the person determining the playing time was CJS, and it wasn't like they were being kept from more minutes by studs. A lot of minutes went to QMB, Ansong, Thomas, who are not bad players, but certainly are not players who keep future stars on the bench.

Now I do think that Dort is tremendously talented and can break out at some point. My point is that he is also likely raw enough that CJS kept him out of the game a lot, and that there will be inevitable struggles once he starts to get regular playing time and teams actually start to game plan against him. Too many of our freshmen didn't play enough for teams to actually have a plan against what they like to do. Seems like that typically needs to happen for a bit before a player can break out (unless they are crazy talented).

A lot of good points as always.
Maybe what Robbins figured out was how to brainwash Stack to give him more minutes.
Giving pre-injury Dort a share of the extra minutes Robbins is now playing either says Stack thinks he's pretty good, or Stack was perversely sitting a better player, or maybe he was doing what we were clamoring for him to do and give the underclassmen some PT. I don't think Dort will step in next year and contribute like Robbins is now, but I think he could be stellar as an upperclassman and give opponents some headaches even as a soph.
Dia sure could have used more minutes. I keep thinking the lack of blowout wins means less time to sub in the "learners." But he has shown some flashes even in very limited time.
I don't know how I forgot about Smith.
Long and short, yeah, losing Robbins is big. But compared to previous seasons I'm not looking at next year's roster and thinking it's a disaster.

[Jason94]

[/quote]


Giving pre-injury Dort a share of the extra minutes Robbins is now playing either says Stack thinks he's pretty good, or Stack was perversely sitting a better player, or maybe he was doing what we were clamoring for him to do and give the underclassmen some PT. I don't think Dort will step in next year and contribute like Robbins is now, but I think he could be stellar as an upperclassman and give opponents some headaches even as a soph.

[/quote]

I don't think at any point did Dort take away minutes from Robbins. He just wasn't used that much to have done so. The most time he had in a game was 16 minutes against Bama when Robbins got injured. After that it was 13 minutes against Wofford, where Robbins and QMB started together, and Robbins got 26 minutes, which is fine against a mid major. After that he played 8 minutes in 4 games, two against bad competition in blowouts, and the other two against UT and Ark, where Robbins was in foul trouble in at least one of those games if not both. He had 7 against Fresno State but Robbins played 33 while QMB didn't play at all. In the other 11 games where he was healthy he played a total of 15 minutes.

OTOH, QMB started a majority of the games prior to Robbins injury, and went over 15 minutes in 9 of the 17 games prior to the injury. So there was a misunderstanding of what the clamoring for playing the freshmen was about, at least in my case. I was saying that if we aren't going to win, at least play the freshmen over players like QMB, Ansong and Thomas. We were playing those players a lot early while keeping Wright, Manjon and Robbins out of the starting lineup while also not playing the freshmen. That was maddening and IMO a major contributor to why our path to the tournament is so narrow at this moment.

It has gotten lost in the win streak, but the abandonment of the crazy starting lineup of Stute, Lawrence, Thomas, QMB and Smith coincided with Robbins' return. Not only has Robbins played more, but Manjon has been above 30 minutes in 5 of the 7 games since Robbins returned, which is another major factor in the win streak. The simple things that were being suggested, once adopted have coincided with our winning more. But the stubborness that CKS had also resides in CJS so you take the good with the bad.