Saturday, October 2, 2010
Well This Sucks: Vanderbilt Loses to UCONN; VSLNation's New Year's Plans Suddenly Wide Open
I've got nothing to say about the game. My desire to be positive is overwhelmed with disappointment. The team got down early, showed a lot of pluck and stormed back to take a 21-14 near the end of the 1st half. Then, nothing. UConn scored 26 unanswered. I know you all have thoughts on today's debacle, so let's hear'em.
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19 comments:
making a new t-shirt:
Every loss is a week closer to basketball season.
this could work for us and pretty much any acc school. trademark!
Very disappointed. Caldwell needs to take a hard look at his preparation and coaching staff. The team did not seem prepared or play with much sense of urgency today (especially after a bye week). That's mostly a coaching issue. Its going to be a long week for the coaching staff trying to keep this team focused.
the day was slightly redeemed when UT confused the number 11 with 13...yikes...
DONT OVERLOOK EASTERN MICHIGAN!!!! If we look past this game and look ahead to Georgia thinking we can win... we will get the crap kicked out of us... think you feel like crap now? Think about lossing to Eastern Michigan...yea...
"Vandy Fans" get pissed all you want be here is one simple/ amazing truth...5 weeks into the season, Vandy is the only SEC East team to beat an SEC West Team. Even though it was Ole Miss, the Rebels will go to a bowl game this year. If someone had told "us" we'd be the only team to have done this the day Bobby resigned, we'd be labeling this season a success. This year aint over...
I've been following the Commodores since the mid-1980s and amazing that the team is usually struggling; VU just can't get any traction. It's pretty disheartening to follow. How do other academic schools field successful programs? Is VU football cursed?
I can't believe that we had those 4 glorious minutes of offense and then the D fell asleep in the second half. I didn't get to see the second half (thank heavens). The coaches must fgure out what happened. People predicted we would win 2 max. I still think we can win 5. My biggest concern is that we MUST get another great recruiting class. These freshman have made a huge difference and we need more classes like that to succeed. Go Dore.
[To Anon 5:51]
Northwestern is now 5-0. Stanford is 4-1. Both teams are consistenly competitive in major conferences and also are fielded from schools whose academic reputations are equal or better to Vanderbilt. To answer your question, Vanderbilt isn't cursed. It's just like Duke, which btw, hasn't had a winning season in football for 20+ years, I believe. In the ACC, there's really no reason that Duke once in that 2 decade period couldn't field a winning team. The problem is that while winning "breds" winning, the opposite is true for losing. String a couple of winning seasons together, and at a minimum, Vandy would start to consistently field competitive teams ala UK. Not the best in the conf. mind you, but at least teams that would be worthwhile watching.
As a vandy parent and supporter, I struggle with the excuses made for not winning over the years. The previous post was correct in comparing Northwestern, Stanford, and perhaps 5-7 comparable academic schools who field winning football teams on a regular basis. It pains me to say that this coaching staff even dating back to BJ has woefully underperformed. Most of these players on the roster had opportunities to play at other top schools. We have the talent, but lets face it, several assistant coaches (or perhaps the entire staff) need to be replaced. No other SEC school would tolerate this pattern of losing while making excuses about "academic requirements, ect. Go Dores....I think.
The BJ + RC era has been the lost decade with win % hovering at 30%. That is not much better than Woody at 29%. The 2008 season was an anomoly and actually proved to me this staffs' ineptness by the second half collapse. Enough BS from the Administration already. Clean out the coaches at the end of the year. BTW, VC Williams should go too.
We all thought Vandy had truned the corner with the win against OLE MISS but then they went and played the team favored to win the BIG EAST! UConn is a good team and they were supposed to be a good team. Their are 3 more games we should win (EM, UT, and Wake) and I really wouldnt be suprised if we pulled another upset. If we want to win more game was need to pull a UK and schedule 4 easy out of conference teams. It's a solid strategy. They played Louisville, Western and Alcorn... we should do that too.
We are 1-1 is the SEC East. UT is 0-2, UK is 0-2 (lost to Ole Miss) and Georgia is 0-3. Look at it that way for hope.
One of the biggest things for me is the penalties we've seen this year, which seem to be a new development since the BJ-RC handoff. This strikes me as a coaching/discipline issue and may be the most frustrating of all. We can talk about why we have slower, undersized players and so forth, but there is no excuse to have as many back-breaking, foot-shooting penalties as we've seen this year. I agree with the earlier commenter's suggestion: much of the time, this team does not seem ready to play.
Vandy defensive problems really bothered and suprised me more than anything else. Vandy's defense has been stellar considering how poor the offense has been, at least until U Conn. The unfortunate thing is that U Conn had the most predictable offense of anyone we have played. U Conn basically ran two different offenses. One with the RB Toddman in the game and one without. I would guess that Toddman touched the ball on 75% of the snaps that he was in the game. When he was out of the game, they mostly threw short to intermediate passes. Vandy should have been able to pick up on this. This is a different ball game if the offense can call plays with a lead and not chase points bc Vandy is behind.
Can you imagine if we had won NW (eliminated the penalties); beat Ucon by playing some defense (elimiated mistakes / poor play calling & adjustments); with a down SEC this year we would be looking at (bowl season) very winnable upcoming games with EM, UT, Wake, UK, and a really down UGA team. I really hate to admit that many of our problems so far can be traced back to execution and the coaching staff. Go Dores !
I agree with the post above. When you have so many of the same penalties game after game, thats a reflection of the coaching staff. I know these guys are young but they arent stupid, they go to Vanderbilt!
The sign of a good coaching staff is seeing visible improvement throughout the course of a game and course of a season. (i.e. Bama, UF, FSU in their prime). For the last decade, Vandy teams have given up halftime leads almost routinely and perpetually gotten worse as the season wears on. Blame it on depth, but a good staff will improve a team and could bring Vandy to a point where they can compete for a SEC championship at least once or twice a decade.
caldwell said today, "the coaches seem to care more than the players" and that "there's a lot of finger pointing going on". that is not the sign of a healthy locker room. would i be surprised if EM beats VU saturday? not a bit. i'm not going but i'm not selling or giving my tickets away either. these seats shall remain empty to spare others of embarassment.
If the above post is correct in quoting Coach Caldwell, I can't bellieve that Caldwell would make that statement publicly rather than trying to deal with his players (privately) in the locker room. This hopefully is not a sign that many of the key players have lost respect for thier coaching staff ? That's a damning statement coming from Caldwell the Monday after a road loss in only game 4 of the season.
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