Monday, April 7, 2008

VSL Hotline: Baseball Woes, Foster Wins Lowe's

Commodore Nation needed some good news this weekend to divert our attention from the baseball team's ongoing struggles. It came on Saturday, when Shan Foster was announced as the winner of the 2008 Lowe's Senior CLASS Award. The award recognizes the most outstanding senior student athlete in college basketball, and Foster won over some impressive competition. Other members of the Lowe's All-Senior All-America Team (and finalists for the award) were Roy Hibbert, Drew Neitzel, Chris Lofton, and DeMarcus Nelson.

The list of prior award winners is impressive: Juan Dixon of Maryland (2002), David West of Xavier (2003), Jameer Nelson of St. Joseph’s (2004), Wayne Simien of Kansas (2005), J.J. Reddick of Duke (2006) and Alando Tucker of Wisconsin (2007).

Commie fans know that Shan--whose selflessness and service to the community are evidence that in addition to being sick at basketball he is also really good at life--is a very deserving candidate. VSL would like to congratulate him on the award and offer our appreciation to the fans, coaches, and media folks who voted for him. While we'd love to think that the "Campaign for Shan" on VSL put him over the edge, given what the fan voting tally was there must have been a huge outpouring of support among the other two categories of voters (media and coaches). Shan winning this exemplifies that Vanderbilt can and is building a winning program "the right way." Foster is the kind of player who can single-handedly make a Vanderbilt fan out of someone who has no affiliation with the school, which, as it turns out, is pretty neat.

I wish there was some way to avoid being a total downer about Vanderbilt baseball. Despite Pedro Alvarez being back in action and getting his first home runs of the season, #18 Ole Miss (unranked at the time) swept Vanderbilt over the weekend (7-6, 8-0, 11-6) to drop the Commodores from #8 to #19 in the Baseball America Top 25. We're now 19-10 overall and 5-6 in SEC play -- a pretty inauspicious start to league play. Two concerns I take from the weekend are (1) the fact that we got shutout on Saturday (never a good sign from a team with supposedly one of the most potent offenses in the country), and (2) Brett Jacobsen's questionable play (he's now 1-3 on the year after on Sunday giving up six runs on seven hits in 3 1/3 innings). We'd also like to send our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Alex Feinberg, whose jaw was broken yesterday on a 90-mph fastball. As if beating us wasn't bad enough, Ole Miss had to add injury to injury by taking out a senior leader who was one of the team's hottest hitters (.400 on the year). Awesome.

While we're on the subject of 90-mph fastballs, I thought Commodore Nation might like to know that my co-ed law school softball team took a page out of the 2008 Vanderbilt men's basketball playbook this past weekend at a national tournament at UVA. After playing well enough to make the playoffs, we lost the last two games prior to the single-elimination tournament and got ousted in the first round by an inferior opponent.

Time marches on, heals all wounds, etc.

I like Memphis over KU, 72-70.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shan beat out Lofton...eeeeexcellent, Smithers.

Anonymous said...

Sports season is over. Baseball sucks. time for American Idol

Bobby O'Shea said...

Tinsely Visits Nashville this Weekend according to Brett Hait's piece in today's Nashville City Paper. According to Brad's father Carl, Oregon and Vanderbilt are the leaders in the sweeptakes for the 6'4 guard's services.

Aaron said...

Does anyone know if any Vandy guys are in the masters this year?

Unknown said...

snedeker!

Anonymous said...

Baseball is the American pastime.

american idol is a joke.




and sucks

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you picked Memphis, Seamus. Blinded by your Southernosity. Rock Chalk!