Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Vanderbilt Hotline: Bring on the Vols...

Looks like Vanderbilt hired a printer from UT for this sign

The SEC Tournament starts today, and as luck would have it, Vanderbilt is set to face their biggest rival in the SEC - the hated Vols of Tennessee. Brett Hait, as usual, has a great primer in today's Nashville City Paper about Vanderbilt facing their in-state nemesis. Hait's got a lot of great "nuggets" including Vanderbilt's record against UT since Corbin took over the team in 2002 (11-4), a great quote from UT coach Rod Delmonico: "Yeah, it’s finally a rivalry...It took 18 years to become a rivalry," and the fact that Vanderbilt only has a record of 2-4 lifetime against Vomit Orange in SEC Tournament play. If you read one article to get ready for today's game, this should be it.

But since you are reading this blog, I imagine you have time to read more than one article about Vanderbilt sports. With that in mind, Mo Patton has a great piece in today's Tennessean about Vanderbilt's emergence on the national baseball scene. As Mo points out, only 10 teams have won 20 league games or more since the SEC expanded to a 30 game season in 1993, of those 10, 4 have gone on to win the SEC tournament. Friend of a friend of VSL, Baseball America's Aaron Fitt tells Patton that he, "[puts Vanderbilt] in that same area of 'developing powers' as North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon State."

If you are going to be a "developing power," you need a bigger stadium, which is why Vanderbilt has almost doubled their seating capacity to 3,700+. As Mo Patton writes in his second article of the day in today's Tennessean, by virtue of being a #1 seed in the SEC Tournament and the SEC Regular Season champions, Vanderbilt is in a very good position to be one of 8 National NCAA seeds. Such a distinction would almost guarantee Vanderbilt a chance to host both a regional and a super-regional in their drive to Omaha.

VUCommodores.com's Will Matthews has an SEC Tournament preview that's worth a gander, and South Carolina's The State has Vanderbilt has a favorite heading into this weekend's tournament.

Lock it up got rolled...again. I'll leave it at that.

American Idol was, for me, just eh. Luckily for the haters, my only comments will be that Jordin Sparks will undoubtedly win. That suspense aside, I can devote my focus and attention to tonight's 2-hour season finale of Lost. You need a primer for that, head over to the D.C. Dharma Station, the official Lost blog of the Vanderbilt Sports Line.

Finally, a shameless plug for another friend of mine who is new to the blogging world. He's only got 3 posts up, and I really think they are all laugh out loud funny. For "shallow thoughts from a deep guy," go to mealmart.blogspot.com, or just click here.

6 comments:

Douglas James said...

ESPN.com's first mock draft after the NBA lottery last night has DB going to the Jazz at 25.

Bobby O'Shea said...

That would be a great place for DB to end up. I was just telling Seamus how good I think the Jazz are going to be, and Byars seems to be a player that would fit in very well with that particular team's style of play.

Douglas James said...

Agreed w/ Boozer and Deron Williams plus AK-47 they could be a very good team. I'm not a huge NBA fan but i think one of the reasons for that is ALL the TALENT is out west.....and that will continue since Portland and Seatle were the big winners in the lottery. There is not a top 10 B-ball player in Phily, NY, Boston, NJ and prob DC (w/ "Agent Zero" aka "the Hibtachi" close). And for Stanimals sake I won't even talk about Atlanta (though they are supposedly going to take Mike Conley Jr w/ the 3rd pick)

Stanimal said...

Agreed, talk all you want about Atlanta. It's not like people think they'll ever be good.

P.S. If we took Conley 3rd, then Billy Knight's IQ would have dramatically increased, and I don't see that happening.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, nice press review.

Bobby O'Shea said...

SI.Com's Mock Draft has Derrick Byars going 21 to the 76ers.