DoubleDore asks:
1. For men’s hoops, what is our most likely minimally difficult path to the NCAA tournament? With no Quad 1 wins yet, I assume we’ll need 5 or 6 of them, then maybe go 50% in remaining Quad 2? (I assume we beat New Orleans.) 2. Over/under 12.5 bid SEC
Tom: Well, the good news is that half the SEC is in the Top 30 of the NET, and all but one are in the Top 75. As such, there will be plenty of opportunities to rack up Quad 1 wins — by my count, 12 of the 18 games in SEC play count as Quad 1, assuming the NET rankings hold up. And only a home game against South Carolina on January 15 doesn’t count as Quad 1 or Quad 2.
Vanderbilt does have two Quad 2 wins right now, and it’s kind of bullshit that the win over TCU doesn’t count simply because TCU elected to play it at a “neutral site” in downtown Fort Worth instead of on campus. But racking up Quad 1 wins isn’t going to be a problem if Vanderbilt wins a bunch of SEC games; that problem will take care of itself. Instead, it’s going to be a matter of simply winning enough games. 6-12 is the cutoff for where I can’t see the NCAA going along with putting a team with that record in the tournament; 7-11 and they probably need to win at least a game in the SEC Tournament. 8-10 is where I think we can go into the SEC Tournament feeling pretty safe, although an early loss might bring our dreadful nonconference SOS into play.
I’d take the under there simply because it’s more likely than not that the SEC is going to cannibalize itself over an 18-game conference schedule and nobody in the league is bad enough to be an automatic win. Somebody’s going 5-13 in the league, basically.
VU 327 asks:
Will either team break into the top 25 this season?
Cole: ABSOLUTELY. We are literally No. 26 right now and I think we beat both Georgia and Kentucky this week to enter the poll strong. I mean, if we had beaten Michigan State we would probably be No. 20 or something right now. Khamil Pierre could be a First Team All-American at the end of the season, and we have plenty of talent up and down the roster. We have a few issues, and I don’t think we are going to be in that top 10 or so teams that are all pounding on each other at the top of the sport right now, but I would be shocked if we don’t work our way into the rankings for at least a few weeks here soon.
Tom: Yes, in fact, I’d be stunned if it doesn’t happen for the women’s team.
ask_thedoctor asks:
Women: this looks like our best team in years, but of course the SEC is always extremely tough. Are there any SEC teams that we cannot afford to lose to in conference play? What are your “win-and-in” games?
Cole: (sorry for the long response, got carried away. Short answer is in the third paragraph)
I would be shocked if we don’t win enough in conference play to make the tournament, most likely as a single-digit seed. The way I see it, the SEC falls in roughly four tiers this year. The first tier (South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, maybe LSU), especially those first three teams, are all competing for a title this year. We aren’t quite there, but I think we could win at least one game. We certainly have the talent to steal a win, but even if we lose all four games against this tier, we could still end up hosting the first weekend as long as we well against the rest of the conference (and maybe finish out with at least a win or two in the conference tournament).
The second tier (THEM, Alabama, Kentucky, Ole Miss, probably Mississippi State) is where we are right now, and where we will write our postseason destiny. Games here are the most important because this is the tier we’ll be jockeying against for conference tournament seeding, which could be the difference between an extra win or two heading into Selection Sunday or getting beatdown by Texas or South Carolina. Based on what I’ve seen so far, we are going to have to get way more consistent on three-point shooting (5 games under 27%, 4 of those coming just since Thanksgiving) and we’re going to have to learn how to beat the press, which is how Michigan State turned things around against us and eventually beat us, if we want to stack wins here.
After bottom-feeding Georgia, we face Kentucky followed by Ole Miss to start conference play. Kentucky is probably a 50/50 game for us, which is why I’d say it’s our “must-win” game. Kentucky has been a national story all year after Kenny Brooks brought over Georgia Amoore and Clara Strack from Viriginia Tech, as well as two-thirds of his staff. They’ve also been winning a lot including against some pretty good teams, and will be ranked No. 16 when we face them on Sunday. We have star players and have put together a decent record so far, but this game is where we find out if we can actually compete against the top half of the SEC this year. Lose and we probably get written off but still make it in, maybe a seed line lower than we otherwise would have. Win and we WILL be ranked and we WILL receive national media attention and we pick up huge steam going into our matchup against an insanely overrated Ole Miss squad.
Further down the schedule, the Mississippi State game offers us an opportunity to earn one more quality win before we end our season on a 5-game stretch against either very good teams that will probably beat us or very bad teams that we will probably beat and not really get anything out of. If we are struggling up to that point, it’s a good place for us to turn things around a little bit. If we are looking like contenders up to then, State offers us another building block in that argument (or a rebound game after a loss to Texas). Both the Kentucky and State games also offer us a chance to earn a tiebreaker in the conference standings, which could prove useful in the usually crowded middle of the SEC pack where we could end up.
The third tier (Auburn, Missouri, Florida) is teams we should beat, but I guess I could see us losing here if we have a bad night. We are definitely better than all three teams, and if we only dropped one game here, I don’t think it would necessarily derail us, but I do think it could drag us down a seed line. I am expecting, or hoping at least, that we go 6-0 against this tier and the next one and that gives us a solid enough base that we can seal the deal in our other 10 games. Anything worse than 5-1 and maybe we should start to worry.
The fourth tier (Texas A&M, Georgia, Arkansas) is seriously bad. Especially those last two teams. It would be a serious knock on us if we lost any of these three games. We lose two of these and I have to assume something has majorly broken down
Altogether, I think we go 8-8 at a bare minimum in conference play, while our absolute ceiling is something like 13-3. Based on that, the range of possible tournament outcomes looks something like First Four Out all the way up to hosting as maybe a 2 seed. We’re probably headed for something more like 10-6 with at least one conference tournament win en route to a 5 seed or so depending on how we accomplish that 10-6 record and what other teams are hot or not at the end of the year.
Men: this is Year 1 with a new coach, so expectations are reasonably muted. After winning all of the games we were supposed to in non-conference play, what signs are you looking for that would indicate that Byington is the right guy for the job?
I’m on the record as being someone who was willing to give Stack exactly one more year. Based on what I know of this roster (little), it seems like a lot of these guys are one- or two-year players. How important is Byington’s first two recruiting classes in the age of the infinite transfer portal, and does that shorten the leash for a “win now” approach?
Tom: I don’t think there’s any particular reason to be concerned that Byington isn’t the right guy for the job — in fact, given the immediate turnaround, I’d say that’s already been proven. Now, if we’re talking upside, that’s not particularly clear. It doesn’t seem like Byington is really intending to build mostly around high school recruits and winning the transfer portal game is, uh, much more about the NIL collective than anything Byington is doing.
Andrew VU ‘04 asks:
The Transfer-o-Dores are 11-1 and winning in dominant fashion of late. With Monday’s hosting of the UNO Fightin’ Terrible Card Games a likely blowout, as well, what’s the chance these winning ways will carry into 2025 and continue in SEC play? Should we expect a win in Baton Rouge, or will our size concerns finally pop up and haunt us in the former land of Will Wade’s wide birthing hips?
Tom: Chances are good, but I would caution against expecting too much in terms of the record in SEC play. There are going to be losses.
Volundore asks:
Is the men’s team…cromulent?
Re: the SEC…how did we get to the point where every one of the 16 teams in the league is in the top 64 (!) of KenPom? This league was a source of high comedy less than a decade ago. Heck, it’s only been 9 years since the SEC got a mere 3 teams in the dance, one of them being a highly disinterested Vandy team with Wade Baldwin that only made it in a technical sense (lost by 20 in Dayton)!
Tom: We got to this point the same way we got to the point of the SEC dominating football and baseball for the last two decades: there’s so much more money coming into the SEC than everywhere else, and the most direct result is holy shit look at the coaching lineup in the league right now. The years of SEC schools making stupid hires in men’s basketball are gone; football is bringing in so much money that they have more than they can spend on football, and that’s going into better men’s basketball hires.
And now that SEC boosters can throw money at recruits? And transfers are immediately eligible? parlagi asked yesterday in the comments about what the hell happened to dangerous mid-majors in the region like Western Kentucky and UAB, and the answer is that if any of those schools have a player who’s good enough to play in the SEC, they’re going to play in the SEC, because they get tampered with and the NCAA does nothing about it, then they get thrown a bag of cash to play at Mississippi State or Georgia instead of Western Kentucky or UAB. Now, the real question is what the hell happened to the ACC, because they’re not even good at basketball any more.
LAdores2011 asks:
Given the *literal* historical season the SEC season is having this year, I can’t see more than 9 wins in league play. That said, we are still actually good, even with a few glaring flaws – so I can’t see less than 4 wins. So 9-9 to 4-14 in the SEC, which will put us between 21-10 and 16-15 overall.
1) Reasonable? Confidence level in that W/L band? (I’m thinking 95%)
2) Given our jersey says Vanderbilt, and our OOC schedule “strength”, what do we need to make the NCAA tourney? (I think 8+ SEC wins, there will be no bad SEC losses this year)
3) Do we manage to upset a top 5 team?
4) What W/L does it take to get our key pieces to stay and not bolt to higher profile programs? (I think 7+ or only the $ will matter)
I think, even if we bottom out, that 16-15 (4-14) gets us into the NIT with the strength of the league this year. (Edit: for the record, I think we end up with 7 SEC wins)
Tom: I think you’re probably underselling the team a bit — I mean, sure, you might get thrown in the meat grinder and go 4-14. That part I can buy. I just think there’s enough uncertainty with how good the team is that I’m not going to put the ceiling at 9-9. Something like 11-7 isn’t completely crazy here.
I’ve answered the question about what we need to do to make the NCAA Tournament, but let me emphasize here that the main thing is not piling up too many losses, because the Selection Committee still kind of does ding you for an ugly win-loss record, Jerry Palm’s stupidity aside. I can pretty definitively say that 18-14 (6-12) with that nonconference schedule is not getting in the tournament, regardless of how many of those conference wins fall under Quad 1. 21-13 (7-11) with a couple of wins in the SEC Tournament? Maybe.
As far as players bolting? Look, we’ve got some guys who can play, but there aren’t any individual players who are that good. There probably isn’t an All-SEC player on the roster and that’s probably the level you have to be at to get other teams to tamper with you. (This isn’t intended as a shot at any of the players, by the way. The real point is that there’s nobody who will become unaffordable for them.)
jessecuster44 asks:
Tom: Yeah, if there’s a concern with McGlockton it’s that he’s been somewhat average against the actually decent teams that Vanderbilt’s played, so that’s TBD. (Then again, he did fine playing in the ACC. But see the results from the ACC/SEC “Challenge.”)
While “lack of size” is the obvious answer, I actually do wonder if they’re going to be so good at forcing turnovers against SEC teams with real ball-handlers. Vanderbilt is 1st in the country (per KenPom) in steal rate but, like, what does that defense do when Walter Clayton is handling the ball?
