Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Vanderbilt Hotline: Tuesday Edition

Good news Commie fans, yesterday I received my SEC Edition of The Sporting News' annual College Football Preview, which means I have completed the trifecta of previews (Athlon's, Lindy's, and TSN) and will supplement their coverage with Fox Sports' preview as well as Blue Ribbon's. We'll be starting our Vanderbilt football preview next week on VSL and a "preview of the previews" will probably be where we begin.

With that look ahead, let's get to the news of the now. Seth Davis has a recap on SI.com of how Team USA Coach Jay Wright made his decisions about his roster for the upcoming Pan America Games. Vanderbilt swingman Shan Foster made the squad, and Seth doesn't really understand why. The Nashville City Paper's new sports blog, Nashville Ballerz, highlighted the article. While you're there, check out the blog rolls on the right hand side of the page.

Pedro Alvarez drove in 5 as Team USA beat Nicaragua 8-4 (by my count, that means Pedro beat Nicaragua 5-4) according to VUCommodores.com.
Team USA plays Brazil today at 11am in the Pan America games. The Medal Round games are July 18th and 19th.

There are articles on EGG, but I've moved on (I really haven't, but my shrink says I need to "let things go"), which means VSL has moved on to. If others want to discuss, we've got a comments section with your name all over it.

Watched Entourage and Flight last night, which, as has become the norm, were both excellent. Entourage has really hit its stride after starting off their 4th season a bit slow (particularly the first half). E and Vince as producers is great, Drama continues to entertain, Ari and Llyod have become the 21st Century "Odd Couple," and the "Artist"/"Suit" fued between Eric and Billy Walsh is great. I don't know if anyone saw the movie this past winter, "Factory Girl" on the life and times of Andy Warhol's muse Eddie Sedgewick, but there was a piece in last Sunday's New York Times Arts and Leisure Section on the trials and tribulations of actually getting that movie complete. For me, it looks as if the writers of Entourage were using "Factory Girl" as a model for Medellin.

Godfather is back in rotation and has been spotted on Bravo, Spike, and AMC over the past few weeks. If anyone out there reading this has not seen the Saga, please report to the principal's office, IMMEDIATELY.

Bobby, OUT

10 comments:

Douglas James said...

What do you guys think Foster's #'s will look like next year? We basically need him to be in the 17 point range for us to even have a chance i think, unless someone has a real breakout year (Beal? Drake? Brown?) Not sure out of those 3 who i think is most likely to step up. And we really need Neltner and maybe the Aussie to dominate the boards so are shooters can shoot w/ confidence.

Bobby O'Shea said...

Seamus has already said that George Drake will be the SEC POY in 2009. What better way to get on that track than have a break-out year next year. I myself love the 3 players you mentioned, and think that, along with Shan, Neltner, either Metcalfe (yes, I said it) or the Aussie, and Red we could be an exciting team.

There is no doubt that Shan will need to have a huge year if we are to be successful. With that said, Shan was DB before DB took over last season. He was supposed to be the guy, and despite being relegated to second fiddle with the play of DB, he still came up big in several games last season. 17 and 6 should be Shan's goal, and ideally he can throw in a few assists.

What will be key for him is, like DB, not settling solely for outside jumpers. Shan getting to the rim will not only open up his outside shot, but will make everyone on the floor around him better. Unlike last year's team, we will not be able to score almost 50% of our points from downtime. Getting to the charity stripe should be this team's goal, and with the athletic nucleus that Stallings has assembled (led by Shan), there is no reason to thinkk that they can't do just that.

Seamus O'Toole said...

I think it's going to be very interesting to see what Stallings does in terms of a starting lineup. Would not be at all surprised to see Andrew Ogilvy start right away, seeing as he's tearing it up at the moment and beginning to look like the Great White Hope from Down Under. But don't forget that Metcalfe was a starter last season before the injury and is probably itching to get his shot. (By the way, how is Metcalfe still in college? Feels like he's been there 7 years.)

With that said, I'm pretty sure Neltner is going to fit more confortably into his role this year as he probably won't be forced to act like a center when he's really a forward.

The other three starters will be Gordon, Foster, and Drake if I had to bet. Beal and Brown will be huge assets off the bench now that they've got a season under their belt.

Drake WILL be SEC POY in 2009 and I wouldn't be surprised if he's good for 14 a game this year. Still, "The Truth" will be the backbone of the team and Seth Davis should can it about his shooting motion.

Anonymous said...

Previewing previews is absurd.

Much love,

The DOC

Anonymous said...

something not related to basketball, and not sure if it's been reported over here, but over on the EPSN boards they are talking about how UNC has cancelled their bball game with Vandy....

Stanimal said...

I'm pretty excited about Ogilvy. If his play in this year's FIBA tournament translates well in his years at Vandy, he could be a big time sleeper pick-up for us. All in all, I think we're going to surprise people with how well we recover after losing Byars.

Pretty sure this hasn't been mentioned, but Vanderbilt picked up a verbal from Evan Ruiz, an offensive lineman from Baton Rouge, giving us nine commits on the year. It seems that teams are getting ahead of the game this year a lot more than in past years.

Douglas James said...

Decided to check out DB's stats in the Vegas Summer League.....lets just say not good. DB played 12, 10, 14 minutes in 3 games. He only scored 2 points (both in the 1st game) and grabbed 4 rebounds. While his stats are upsetting I'm more worried that he doesn't seem to be getting much playing time even in the summer league. Where is this UNC/ Vandy thing? Haven't seen it anywhere on ESPN.com

Anonymous said...

Douglas James, I have also checked out DB's stats and they may look worse than they actually are. Apparently he was recovering from a quadricep injury and sat out the first two games of the Vegas summer league. They are currently playing in a Utah league and DB had something like 13 points and 4 assists off the bench in his most recent game. Regardless, his early performance (injury or not) has not been stellar.

http://www.nba.com/sixers/news/utah_summer_league_070715.html

Anonymous said...

here is a link to the thread on the ESPN boards where they were discussing the UNC v Vandy thing

http://boards.espn.go.com/boards/mb/mb?sport=ncaa&id=ncb&tid=1114918&lid=92

Stanimal said...
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